We arrived in Seoul after a 12 hour ride on a 747 from San Francisco. We took off around 11am Pacific time on Sunday and arrived about 3pm local Seoul time - on Monday. So basically lost a day flying backwards throughout time zones. We will slowly get our day back an hour at a time over the next three months as we continue west.
The Courtyard reception lobby.
Awesome breakfast buffet.
Max (most popular local beer) on tap for happy hour.
Self serve fire safety in the hallways.
Self serve fire escape in the room. Window doesn't open so I guess you just chuck the desk chair through the window and rappel down 9 floors. Glad we aren't on 14.
Walking the area across from the hotel looking for street food. Lots of vendors selling mostly the same lineup of meats on sticks.
Seoul airport was very efficient and we breezed through immigration with the agent not saying a word, collected our bags and then customs was basically handing your form to an agent while waiting in a 5 second line. Can we send someone from Miami over here to get some pointers on moving people through customs and immigration?
The 747 we rode for 12 hours from SFO to ICN.
We opted for the 9,000 WON (about $9) bus ride instead of $75 cab to our hotel in the Times Square area of Seoul. It took over an hour and was not a direct route, but got to see a bit of this massive city - metro population approximately 25,000,000. We paid close attention to the traffic and driving habits of the other drivers along the way - we will have to ride the bikes off the island airport and through Seoul on Wednesday afternoon. We soon realized that we are screwed! The drivers are as bad as advertised (we had been told S. Korea is world famous for bad drivers). Apparently drivers are not responsible for vehicles traveling behind them so no look lane changes are the norm. We will most definitely have to be on our game once we get on the bikes on Wednesday afternoon. We will also be doing this during the late afternoon/evening rush hour - although from what I've seen, the streets are pretty congested all day long.
We are staying in one of the largest and nicest Courtyards I've seen. We walked around last night to get familiar with our surroundings. There are hundreds of restaurants and dozens of street vendors within a block of the hotel. It was pretty impressive how packed all theses restaurants were considering the density and it was a Monday. We sampled the "meat on a stick" and pot stickers from a variety of the small tented food shacks we passed on the street. It was not obvious what exactly we were eating, but it sure was tasty. Extra bonus was that we didn't wake up sick this morning. The breakfast buffet at the hotel was one of the most expansive I've seen - and included in our room rate. Thanks Jason for the Marriott friends and family room discount!
This will be the last posh accommodation for a while so we need to savor it. After Tuesday night we will be camping for 4 nights in Korea before we get on the ferry on Sunday. The monsoon season just arrived and the forecast says 100% chance of rain Wednesday though Sunday. We opted for the cheapest ferry ticket which will put us in a 30 bed bunk room for the 13 hour sailing to Vlad $209 USD each for us and $300 USD for each bike. Should be an interesting trip sailing through the Sea of Japan. I hope the typhoons that are forming all over this region stay south of us.
We have the whole day today to kill exploring the city, so plan to buy public transportation passes and hit the train and buses. We need to be back to the airport around 10am on Wednesday and clearing the bikes will take all day so this is our only time to see a bit of Seoul.
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