Food for the Seoul

Anyong! First off, sorry for the terrible pun in the title. Actually, that's not true; I'm not sorry. As you probably know I'm now one week into a 3 week stint in Korea for work. It has been a good experience so far. I came into the airport near Seoul last Friday afternoon. It was a 14 hour flight from Chicago but I was able to travel in business class, so it wasn't too terrible. If you ever get the chance to let someone else to pay for a business class ticket for you, I highly recommend it.
This was the view from my hotel room.
The next morning. See that tiny little tower on the horizon just right of center? We'll get to that later.

On Saturday morning my friend and colleague Gib, who had been here for two weeks before me, came into Seoul to head home the next day. Gib is transferring to our plant near Austin, Texas and will be gone before I get back so this was going to be the last time I saw him for a while. We had fun exploring the city.
This was at dinner with Gib. They give you these sweet apronbibs to keep the spatter from the food off your clothes.

On Sunday morning Gib had to go to the airport to head home and I had to go to Icheon, about an hour southeast of Seoul.
This is the view from my hotel in Icheon (where I am right now, actually). That lake down there has a nice little path around it that I like to run on in the mornings.
Here is a can of Mountain Dew. What's funny is that those symbols literally say "mountain dew", not the korean words for mountain dew. I spent some time learning the alphabet so that I wouldn't be completely lost. They spell out the syllables mah-oon-teen-doo.

Nothing really happens during the week, just work mostly. So I'll skip that part.

Saturday I decided to head back to Seoul and explore a little more. The have a really nice public transit system here including lots and lots of buses that run all over the country. I can hop on a fairly nice bus in Icheon that leaves every 30 minutes and be in Seoul in an hour for about $4.
This is the Changgyeonggung palace. It was the first place I visited and was quite the site to come out of the metro to see.

The next place I visited was the Olympic Park, built for the 1988 Olympics. Some of you might be old enough to remember that. I didn't really get many interesting pictures there, but it was a pretty cool place. It's a huge park with lots of grassy fields and trails as well as the event venues from the Olympics.

My next goal was to visit the N Seoul Tower, on Namsan Mountain in the middle of the city (remember that tower I mentioned earlier?) There is a cable car that runs up there, but I decided to go the hard way and take the stairs. It's a long way up there, but it was actually really nice.


Once I got to the top of the mountain, I bought a ticket and took the elevator to the observation deck of the tower. It was one of the most amazing views I've ever taken in. I just wish the air had been a little clearer. It's amazing how big this city is.




On the way back down the mountain after the sun was setting, the city really started to light up. These were some of my favorite pictures.


After coming down from the mountain I wanted to go see Myeongdong, a famous shopping area. To be honest it wasn't really my thing. It was insanely crowded and I don't really like shopping anyway. I grabbed a bite to eat (at Outback) and headed back to the bus station. I was sure to check their website to find out what time the last bus back to Icheon left and it said 10PM. So I figured that leaving for the bus by 7:45 should give me plenty of time. I got to the bus station by 8:20 and found a big sign that I hadn't seen when I first arrived that listed the departure cities. I was a little shocked and surprised when that sign said the last bus was at 8:40. So what I thought was plenty of time ended up being the skin of my teeth. Thankfully I didn't have to spend an unplanned night in Seoul or fork out for an $80 cab ride.

Well, that's too much typing for one sitting. I'll try to update a little more later if I do anything interesting. For now it's time to go get some food.