We were up ready for a big day of exploring the city of Seoul. We got our morning coffee or tea and headed across to Gyeongbokgung Palace. This is one of the 5 main palaces of Seoul. It was a beautiful complex of sprawling grounds which was open and so pretty to look at.
We arrived in time to catch the changing of the guards. It was amazing to watch. The drum players and the conch shell blows came out first and made the music for the guards to change places. It was awesome. Their was a lot of fan fare and marching but eventually the swapped the guards and we were allowed some photo opportunities.
We spent the rest of the time exploring the grounds. It is cool because they encourage people to dress in the traditional dress while in the palace. This really gives the palace a feeling of more old school. We didn’t finish the whole grounds and got distracted by some music.
We found ourselves in the National Folk Museum of Korea which is where the music was coming from. They were performing songs and dances for Chuseok. It is currently Chuseok in South Kore which is there Autumn Harvest Holiday. The performance we saw had men dressed up as a turtle and many songs and dances were performed for the good harvest.
It is super hot and humid in Korea today so we headed to grab some lunch. We had our first Korean BBQ which was so good. The lady who worked here was so nice and helped us out with how to eat the food.
Next stop was across to Namsangol Hanok Village. There was a Taekwondo show on done by some of the top elite teams in South Korea. The show was a great mix of comedy, stunts, dance and amazing taekwondo. The elite Team in Taekwondo showed us some amazing board breaking in the air and even some board breaking in places there legs should not have been able to reach. It was really worth going to. I think it was one of the best performances I have seen in a long time. After the show we were melting. 40 minutes of sitting in the sun was a killer. We had a look around the rest of the village which was nice and then headed to our last destination.
We hiked up to catch the Namsan cable car. The wait was long (about 40 minutes)but eventually we hop on the cable car and were heading up the mountains to Nseoul tower. The view up was cool you have a view of Seoul as well as all the forest of Namsan Mountain. We spent some time taking some photos up the top of the mountain. We decided we didn’t need to pay to go up the top of the tower because the view was good from the Mountain top observation deck.
We grabbed some dinner at this cute little restaurant overlooking Seoul and order the biggest bowls of food you have ever seen. We then watched the sun go down over Seoul. We got talking to this lovely girl who lived in HongKong. It was such a nice way to finish up our first full day in Seoul. Tired and with sore legs we headed back to our Hotel. We have a huge day tomorrow as we are heading on a day trip to the bottom of Korea.
Gum-Sum-Ni-Da = Thankyou
