Korea Day 13: Gyeongbokgung [Picture Heavy]

We decided to visit the palace on our last day in Seoul.  The weather was perfect...sunny, no clouds, pleasant temperature...

I'll try to caption some of the photos later.  Please remember to click "Read More" near the bottom to view further pictures, there were so many I inserted a break in the post.

There was a good number of student groups visiting as well.  We got there right as the guard was changing.  Oh and of course there were plenty of couples...they are EVERYWHERE!

Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center

I was down at the Gaylord National for work recently.  Check out some pictures I took of the place!

Bedroom Area

Twin Sinks, I know most of my readers probably know what I look like...

I only had a shower...no tub

Entry way and Hall

The rear courtyard no one talks about 

The main atrium

Atrium again

Cloudy Day on the Potomac

View of the Potomac

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

~