art and guns

This weekend I took a solo trip to Seoul. I got up super early on Saturday and took the train, all the while picking and planning from my travel guide. By the time I was finished marking everything of interest in my book, I had probably 20 tabs sticking out of it. I went first to a palace that is a UN-designated "World Heritage Site." The last members of the royal family lived here until they died out in the mid-80s (though they no longer had any real power). The grounds and "secret garden" are beautiful...





Then I walked around my favorite area - Insadong. It has lots of quiet streets with big trees. Here I found quite a few vegetarian restaurants and traditional tea houses. I chose one and afterward picked a walking tour from my guidebook. At this point, I was looking so very touristy with a huge blue "KOREA" book in hand as I checked each instruction of the tour, but it made it seem more fun, like a treasure hunt or something. Here are some pretty sights I passed - lots of art galleries, little boutiques, parks, and quaint neighborhoods. The tour was supposed to take about an hour, but it took me around three since I got sidetracked a lot. There was so much to see, and it was very hot, so I had to keep stopping for drinks.






I like this picture above because you can see traditional-style houses and the modern skyline in the back. When I finished the tour (I have to admit that I cheated on the last part because I got lost), I treated myself to a glass of white wine in a outdoor garden cafe. I like to pack as many things as I can into a vacation, so I decided to go to an entirely different part of the city in the late afternoon.


This stream runs through the city and lots of families picnic here to stay cool and play in the water. It was so fun watching the kids. Then I ran into a B-Boy show on a stage in the street (video coming). I was exhausted from walking for 12 hours and went to check-in to a public bath house some friends told me about. It's only $10 and is open 24 hours. There are 5 floors with all "flavors" of hot and cold baths - coal, jade, some kind of berry - and an oxygen room, an ice room, a room where you can lay on heated pebbles, lots and lots of beauty options to keep you happy. The top floor is for sleeping - a men's and women's and snorer's room. I have you tell you that I decided to pay $1 for 10 minutes in one of those automated massage chairs, and it hurt like hell. But of course I had to pretend it was fine since there were quite a few families watching me in curiosity (I only saw one other foreigner, and this place was jam-packed with families and friends who had come together).

I love taking pictures of things that I think are funny or amusing or weird here. Below is a sampling from this trip.



Some booklets were outside an art gallery with a sign that said "It's free." Then in smaller letters, "You can take this book." Thank you, I just may.



This marker was for an "unreal hill" and was sitting on a tiny piece of completely flat grass.



This is priceless and self-explanatory.

Next up was the trip to the DMZ - the military border with the North. I met a lot of cool people on the bus ride up there. I even sat next to this Indian man who was working for Samsung as an engineer and picked up Korean on the job. We stopped here first.




This Kiwi guy was wearing a Dickies shirt with "Fort Worth, Texas" on the chest.



DMZ rice