Lunar New Year Danies Visit part 1 (Seoul)

Febuary was a great month. I got my biggest paycheck, a new laptop, a nintendo wii, and a 29″ flat-screen TV. My sister Danielle visited me and K for the Lunar new year holiday. Danie was the bringer of the wii and laptop so she gets many many many props. Danielle arrived in Seoul on the 14th. Over our two full days in the city we saw alot:

Dongdaemun Market

Dongdaemun is a fashion market, lots of good cheap clothes can be found here. There are also street vendors everwhere. That’s where we got this culinary treat. It’s a weiner on stick dipped in batter and then rolled around in french fries and finally deepfried! It was soooo bad i just had to have one, Danie even tried a frie/batter piece on the condition that there would be no meat. Sis is a vegetarian although she did *mistakenly* eat a little meat on her first day in Korea. I got a kimbop roll from a store near our hotel for her to try. The rolls are pre-packed and the type of kimbap is written in korean so I asked the store clerk for a 2 rolls with no meat and the ones he gave me had spam and processed crab in them. Danielle was into her third piece when she held up the little cube of spam and asked “what is this?” “Is it meat?” But the kicker is that little miss Don’tLikeMeat was raving about how tasty and delicious kimbap is right up until her discovery.

Gyeongbuk Palace

At the gates to the palace they just had the changing of the guards ceremony. These guy stand still and look authentic for hours on end. This is something that I’d be incapable of given my fidgety tendancies. It took some work to get Danielle into traditional dress. When she saw the costumes and was all no no no. I was talking to her and the salesgirl came up and asked if we’d take a picture. I said I would if Danielle would. Sis can say no to me until the end of time, but not so much when it comes to strangers. There is also a nice museum located next to the palace.

Seoul Tower

The tower is located on the top of a small mountain in Seoul, I think the elevation is around 450m or so. The view of the city is magnificent. We took the cable car up to the tower which meant getting up 5 flights of stairs to the car, and then what seemed like an eternity of windy stone stairs untill we reached the tower. Once up there we decided to have supper in the revolving restaurent. It’s probably the nicest place I’ve ever eaten at (also the most expensive). But definetly a good way to cap off the night. We left the tower and took the road back to the base of the mountain and got a cab back to our hotel.

The Coex mall is the worlds largest underground shopping center according to our guidebook. It has pretty much everything you’d expect from a mall, there’s a huge bookstore, various sports shops, an apple store, and different clothing stores. Of course there is also the aquarium which was a great spot to visit.

There’s lots of gold fish species, giant crabs, sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and so on. The highlight of the trip was the doctor fish tank where you could put your finger in and these little fish would swim up and start nibbling. It’s a very odd sensation, almost like but apparently they are very good for you. The entire tour actually took over two hours and was very enjoyable. After we finished in the aquarium we went to Seoul Station and took the train back to Daejeon for an overnight stop before the Gyeongju leg of Sis’ tour.