Seoul! Pt. 1

Hey guys! Thanks for being patient. Sorry it took me so long to get this up, but I got back yesterday and have been pretty busy since. I'm going to do my best to break this up so it's not one giant post considering I did a ton of things in a short period of time. I took a lot of pictures and videos so you guys can live the adventure right along with me.

Tuesday started rather early. I had a 10:15am KTX (super fast bullet train) ticket leaving from 동대구 (Dong Daegu) station. This station is about an hour away by bus so I figured on taking the 8:30am bus from campus. I won't lie I was a bit nervous about all of this, I don't use public transportation at all in the U.S. and well I feel pretty inexperienced with all of it. Add the fact that I was meeting someone that I had never met before on Tuesday to show me around, and you have a full out Crazy Carl.

So after a semi familiar bus ride to Dong Daegu station I got off and headed inside to hop on the KTX. This thing is truly impressive. It really feels like you're in an airplane when you're riding it. There is no noticeable friction with the track, and the cabin even looks like an airplane. Here are some pics and videos:

KTX Cabin

Gratuitous picture of my life

These videos are taken at 300km/hr which works out to about 205 mph. The last video is of us crossing the Han River at that speed, I missed the first 5 seconds or so and it still took that long. As you can see it's a pretty significant piece of water, and consequently our first stop on our journey. (Like how I do that? :P)

I got into 서울역 (Seoul Yuk) Seoul Station. First up: Han River Cruise.

Here's me breaking a bench

Part of Seoul from the Han River

This was a pretty typical river cruise. I've been on the Chicago River cruise a few times and they were very similar. Hang out on board as they go out and look at the sights. Most people actually gathered inside to see a guitar show that started about 20 minutes into our journey.

Capitol Building

More Capitol

Can't see but this boat was actually a fountain

There's a water spout raining down

Here is the gate at 남대문 (Namdaemun)

Seoul actually has a wall built around it with 4 gates, one on the East, West, North, and South.

Of course these gates never close

Namdaemun is actually a large traditional market

 

As you can see I did my best to try and get you guys a good shot of the capitol. I do my best not to post duplicate pics on this blog, but I figure that each of these is interesting enough that you can skip through the extra ones if you want.

Next up was 남산 (Namsan) tower! This tower is placed upon the highest point in Seoul, and is consequently almost right in the middle. It sits in the middle of what appears to be a forest preserve as well. This place was super cool. We went up to the observation area in a cable car, and from there still had to climb a ton before we even got to the tower.

Shots from outside the cable car arrival point.

Looking down through the trees at Seoul

The beginning of the long stairway up

Does anyone recognize this? These are love locks in Seoul. There are plenty of gift stores on the way up wanting to sell you a lock anywhere from $5-10 so you can write your name along with your love and lock it up. This was just one small passageway, these things are all the way up...and I mean alllll the way up.

Right at the beginning of the observation area

Tried to get the name AND the top of the tower, no dice

Dude is like "whaaaa

One last try

Lastly there's a video of one of the observation decks and how it overlooks Seoul. There is plenty more to come, but I'm actually going to cut it here for now. Don't worry I'm going to immediately start working on Seoul pt. 2. I just don't want these to become super scroll heavy, and this is a good place to cut things. See you on the next post!