RTW East to West: A Day Exploring Seoul...

Yesterday was our free day to explore Seoul. We started out walking around the area near our hotel and put in about 3 miles exploring street fruit stands (there was many) and the local business. There were a few larger businesses like an Audi dealership we passed, but most were very small businesses selling goods and services like tires, auto repair, building supplies, electronics, retail shops, barber and beauty shops, etc. There were multiple examples of each in rather close proximity and all seemed to be very busy with customers and work. I imagined this duplicated in the thousands of neighborhoods and pockets throughout the city. It just kind of struck me how a Home Depot, Napa or Walmart - or any US style big box slapped into this particular neighborhood would put most or all out of business. Kind of like the evolution of capitalism in the US. I like what I saw here better, but I digress. After making the loop and returning to the street by our hotel it was time to venture further out. This is a big city and there was certainly more to see.

We figured that since we mastered the trains so easily in Vancouver we could get around Seoul by public transport and immediately bought our T cards and charged them up with 10,000 WON. We soon discovered that the Vancouver trains were a kiddie park ride compared to the third largest subway system in the world. Impressive doesn't even come close to describing the scope of what it took to build this system that has levels at least 100 feet under the streets and trains well over a football field long. But, we eventually figured it out and seemed to pop up from underground pretty much where we planned. We rode around all day and still have about 7,000 WON left on our cards to get back to the airport today to clear the bikes through customs.

We decided to go straight to the city center to explore what is the downtown financial district of Seoul. Not sure how far it was, but it took about 35 minutes with one connection on the trains. We walked around what looked like the area that has all the embassy's then just wandered around looking at the tall buildings, statues, interesting architecture, etc. There were lots of people everywhere. Mostly Korean worker bees, Chinese, Japanese and Russian tourists - a few Europeans and even fewer Americans. We had heard about this tower in the area that had a great view to the city - and after walking around a corner, we saw the antenna peaking over a small mountaintop.

Once we got close enough to see how to get to the tower, we realized it was almost 2pm so decided to grab some lunch at a little noodle/soup place just off the street in a little upstairs mall. There was just one other table dining - which normally makes me hesitant, but there were maybe only 16 seats total in the whole place anyway so we gave it a shot because the pictures of the soups posted on the window looked really good. We got lucky and it was very tasty and cheap.

After lunch we walked up to the incline elevator that goes up to the tram that takes you to the base of the tower - called the North Seoul Tower. We got to the base of the tram and paid the $10,000 WON each for tickets. One we got to the top of the tram we wandered around the wooded area, took in various views of the city from the different platform areas. We later arrived to the base of the tower, went inside and found it was another $9,500 WON. We almost blew off the elevator ride to the top, but said what's another 9 bucks - we had come all this way to be almost to the top. Glad we did because the 360 city views from the top were amazing. We got a full scope of the size of the Seoul metro area - which was like nothing either of us had ever seen. We were both instantly turned into gapers just staring out to each view angle in sheer awe. I think we may try to bypass the city to the north or south as our original plan of running straight across from west to east would take hours and hours. This city is stupid crazy big! Pictures cannot capture the scope.

After taking in the views for about an hour we went back down, found a subway station and made our way back to the hotel. The subway ride back was much different as it was evening rush hour and the trains were all wall to wall people - and the streets were bumper to bumper cars. We were hot and sticky from the 33 Celsius heat (90+ degree) and humidity, so we hit happy hour in our hotel bar enjoying the A/C and $3 Max beers.

We then hit an interesting little restaurant on the strip that had little coal grills on each table to cook the meats chosen from the menu - Korean BBQ! A bunch of other stuff came with the grilled meats and we struggled to figure out how everything was supposed to work. The staff spoke no English and we speak no Korean, but we managed to figure it out with their assistance through gestures and pointing. Turned out to be our best meal so far in Korea.

Lots of these fruit stands.