Korea Day 12: The DMZ

The DMZ (Korean Demilitarized Zone)


There were many tour groups besides our bus of about 30-40 people.  It was quite simple to arrange, we found a flyer in the hotel lobby and called in to the English speaking number.  They asked where we were staying and wanted a credit card to guarantee the reservation.  All they told us was that a driver would pick us up at 7:50am ("Seven-Five-Zero" as we were told).  How would they know what we looked like? They had that figured out! Because they knew my friend's name, they knew how we looked!


While the whole situation sounded shady at first, it actually turned out all right.  The driver found us, we stopped outside a different hotel to catch our bus and then off we went.  Our tour guide gave us some background information on the way up to the DMZ and also collected our fee.  We made it to the first stop along the tour, what I understood as a simple staging area before you got to go to where the tunnel was found.  Here come the pictures:

Korea Day 11: The National Museum of Korea and N Seoul Tower

The National Museum of Korea

The architecture of the museum was impressive.  I'll post some pictures below, otherwise, it was about the same as any museum. The focus seemed to be on historical artifacts and calligraphy.  A lot of school children were there on field trips.

N Seoul Tower

Seoul tower is situated on top of a large hill in the middle-ish of Seoul. We got off at the Myung-dong subway stop and then followed instructions given on Korea's tourism website.  The instructions made it sound like we were climbing Mt. Everest.  There were like 10 instructions to follow when really all they had to say was "follow the road up the side of the hill and look for the cable car station".

You get to the cable car station and pay a fee to ride up to the base of the actual tower.  Then you get to the base of the tower and get to pay another fee to go up to the top to the 360 degree view.  Luckily there are some things to keep you occupied if you don't want to pay the fee to go to the top.  We walked around the base station which gives you a mediocre view of the surrounding area.  They have walls up around the edge of the best viewing areas so...they somewhat impede your views.  A couple of restaurants are also present, we ate at one of them.

We got a warning that it would be about an hour until we would be able to go up to the top of the tower so we walked around the gift shop and took our time at dinner.  Once our time rolled around we walked into the building where the elevator was, skipped the obligatory tourist photo station, and hopped in the elevators.  They were VERY fast, only a couple of seconds and *poof*, you were at the top.  There was an entertaining video projected on the ceiling of the elevator showing you blasting off into space.
Without further delay...here are the pictures (credit my friend's D-SLR):

There were a lot of couples at the Tower that evening. Just like everywhere else we went in Seoul...haha

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Korea Day 10: Lotte and visiting the office

In the morning, my friend and I decided to pay a visit to my local office to share a cup of coffee and talk about our trip so far.  We headed downtown and easily found our way to the office high-rise.  We sat and chatted around Korea.  They treated us to lunch, see the pictures below!

Banchan and Veggies

The Spread

The Spread

Doenjang

Kimchi Jigae

Naengmyun

After lunch we hit up the LOTTE department store...

The LOTTE Department store in downtown Seoul is ginormous.  There are actually three different buildings that make up "Lotte Town".  There is the Main Hall of LOTTE Department Store (14 floors, 3 basements), AVENUEL (Premium brands, 10 floors, 3 basements), and LOTTE young plaza (Youth Fashion, 7 floors, 1 basement).  A grand total of 31 floors and 7 basements, granted some of the basements are parking but still...huge is an understatement.

The images of USA department stores like Macy's, Nordstorm, and Sears may come to mind initially.  This is sort of what you would expect in Korea.  However, in Korea it seemed the actually floors of the store did not extend outwards as far as American department stores.  They had many floors instead of a few floors with a lot of square footage (or square meters).

Some floors in LOTTE would only feature one main brand or one style (i.e. Men's Outdoor, Young Casual, Watches & Jewelry).

My friend and I went to LOTTE for really only one store.  It wasn't even a Korean brand...it's Japanese.  The brand is MUJI and they make some pretty cool, simple but elegant things for the home and office.

After making our purchases (mainly notebooks) in the MUJI section, we wandered around the 'young plaza' building until we had had our fill of fashion.  In general, the merchandise was not cheap.  The prices were very similar to prices in American department stores.

I can't remember if we did anything eventful that evening...probably not :)

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Korea Day 9: The Afternoon at Cheongyecheon Stream in Seoul

After getting back to the hotel from the air show, my friend and I decided to head downtown.  We ended up walking down to Cheongyecheon Stream.  This stream is located below street level and was made into a public park space.  The streams runs down the middle and it is bordered by paths on either side.  There were stepping stones between the paths crossing the stream.  It seemed perfectly acceptable to use these to cross.  The only other points to cross were stairs leading to street level bridges which were much more infrequent.

The stream seemed like a popular place to take a mid-afternoon stroll with your sweetheart.  There were a lot of couples hanging out that afternoon.  Some were walking the stream, others had set up small picnics on the stone banks. Many were just holding hands and enjoying the beautiful weather.  Other groups of people included students that had just gotten out of school as well as whole families.

When I go back to Seoul, I'd like to walk the whole stream length.  I think when we were there we picked it up somewhere in the middle and then ended a little bit before its official end.  

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Korea Day 1-9: Seoul Air Show

The main reason I went to Korea was for work.  I won't bore you with all the details but I will show you some pictures!