Riding the Seoul Train to Seoul

We recognize that we have miss-spelled "soul train," but this time we were on a bullet train ride to Seoul.  Brian and Alexia even reserved the family seats that provide a table between four facing train seats.  That makes for a table to eat breakfast and snacks, as well as to play board games during the journey.  These family seats are a precious commodity, and you literally have to provide birth certificates to prove that they will be used for family members.  We had three other seats besides those four family seats, and Denisa and Camden are modeling the regular seats in our group.

We packed breakfast for our early morning train ride, and Brian (whose initials are B.A.E.) is posing with one of our new favorite fruits--the BAE.  The bullet train makes several stops in our journey, but we are speeding by at 300 kilometers (about 184 miles) per hour.  That makes a trip that would take five hours to drive in a car, into a two hour train ride between Ulsan and Seoul.

First stop in Seoul is our hotel that is close to the train station.  The Four Points Sheraton starts on the 19th floor, with office space in the levels closer to the street.  So we have a great view of the city of Seoul from our 23rd floor window.  That's the train station in the foreground, and a little peek of the hills that surround Seoul in the right hand background.


This picture from the bathroom proves that we are staying in a swanky place for our weekend trip to Seoul.  We had to giggle at all the options available for the toilet, as well as the telephone nearby for making bathroom phone calls.

We also had to take a picture of the room service menu, which looked a little pricy.  We've never eaten a sandwich that cost 34,000!  It's a good thing that price is quoted in won.

We spent the first day visiting friends that work at the US Embassy in Seoul.  Their house is inside the US army base in the middle of Seoul.  This old base hosts old trees with huge leaves!

We toured the army base (and its playgrounds), ate lunch with the King family, and ended the day at a huge cookout hosted by the Embassy association.

The next day we played tourist, starting the morning with a sumptuous meal at their favorite breakfast café.

Down the street we see a huge finger on the sidewalk.  We wonder what it might be pointing to . . . .

It's a gorilla climbing up the building, of course.

Next stop is the Gangnam area of Seoul--known for its high-end shopping and car dealerships.  Now it is also famous for the Gangnam Style song and dance that went viral on You-Tube.  We did the dance on the street while the song played in the background.

Next stop is the Olympic Stadium, home of the 1988 summer games.  There are statues along Olympic Drive of the sports hosted here.  Korea will be host to the Olympics again in 2018.

We jump out of the van and run behind the stadium when we hear and see interesting things.  We got to see a motorcycle race first,

and then discovered men readying high speed toy boats for a race on the river.

We stayed long enough to watch these big boy "toys" jetting across the Han River that winds its way through Seoul.


All this traveling around town is facilitated by Mr. Li.  Recommended by the hotel as an international driver, he stays with us all day to transport our group of 7 all over the city of Seoul.  Mr. Li smiled broadly when the children sang the Korean National anthem for him.  They are learning all the national anthems of all the countries represented at their school, and today that knowledge certainly surprised our driver.

We then headed to the Itaewon section of Seoul, to do some shopping and visiting the Korean War Museum.

The entire outdoor section is filled with tanks and planes that the children enjoyed climbing all over.  

 "Children" would of course include Mark.  After climbing into and all over the planes and tanks, this picture shows him maturely looking over the parking lot of full-size war toys.  In the background on the far left we can see Seoul Tower.  We won't have time for that tourist attraction this time.

 We drive by one of the few surviving sections of the ancient walls of the city of Seoul.

 
Our next stop is Gyeongbokgung Palace.  The place is packed and traffic is a mess in this area.  There's something about a beautiful Sunday afternoon that brings everyone to the palace.  Personally, we only came for the huge cotton candy.  Of course, one isn't enough for 7 people so we downed two of those fluffy floss balls before we got to the palace.

At the gate to the palace stands the stern-looking guards.  Standing perfectly still, at first you must assume that they are mannequins.  But we saw one of them wink at Cole.

Their job is to stand perfectly still without changing expression, posing with all the tourists.  They do their job well.

Then they spring to life to begin the changing-of-the-guard ceremony.  More guards appear to join the "mannequins," and then a whole new set will come to take their place.

We notice that all the guards have fake beards and mustaches.  Does this mean that Koreans don't grow facial hair?  All this pageantry is going on in the palace court yard.  We couldn't help but notice the dichotomy of old vs. new in this picture with the mirrored wall skyscraper in the background.

There are hundreds of people that have come to watch the changing of the guard ceremony this afternoon.  Most are dressed in today's fashion.  But there are a few dressed in the traditional Korean dress called a hanbok.


We were ready to take a family picture in the palace court yard, when a Korean girl asked to take a picture with Brian and Alexia's family.  Then another showed up and handed Mark and Denisa their camera to take a photo with the family.  Then another woman sidled up next to them and had a friend take a picture.  It wasn't long before a line formed to take pictures.  Mark and Denisa continued taking pictures for Koreans that wanted to be standing next to this cute young American family.  They have gotten this rock star treatment many times since they moved to South Korea, but it was very interesting for us to witness it too.  Incidentally, no one wanted a picture with us.

Our next stop is Insadong, where there is literally fighting in the street.  We watch as the traditional Korean fighters put on a show for the crowd.

This area is crowded on a beautiful weekend!  But there are lots of fun things to see and do in Insadong.  One of our favorites was watching a food demonstration.  He started with a simple square of hardened honey.

Using only white cornstarch to keep it from getting sticky, the warmth of his hands allowed it to stretch into a continuous loop.

We watched in amazement as he continued to stretch that loop and then twisted it to make two loops.  He continued to stretch and twist, each time doubling the number of loops in his hand.  He counted the loops as they formed--2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 . . .   They became threadlike as the number of loops exceeded 6,000!

The next step is winding the hair-like twisted honey strands around chocolate or nuts and forming amazing bite-size candy treats that are nestled into boxes of ten.

Of course we had to buy a box to taste them.  We couldn't read any of the Korean words on the box, so we lovingly nicknamed them "hairy chocolates."  They tasted pretty good if you could get past the hairy texture of the twisted honey.

We stopped for a meal of fast food--Korean style.  We ate our fill of dumplings at a little street café and became big fans of steamed dumplings.

The children had Turkish ice cream for dessert.  But they had to work for their ice cream.  The guys dishing up the cones were great at trickery, and it was hard to catch those cones attached to their stick. The audience is obviously enjoying the ice cream show as well.  About the time that Katrina thought she finally had her dessert, he suddenly slipped the ice cream out of her cone.

Cole thought he finally got his ice cream, and you can see that it is double stacked, and the trickster will take away the top ice cream cone leaving Cole with an empty one.

Our day in Seoul was so much fun, but we were tired by evening.  Mr. Li shuttled us back to the station to catch the evening "Seoul train" back to Ulsan.  We played games for the two hour ride home, and reminisced about our great day in Seoul.  Thanks Brian, Alexia, Katrina, Camden, and Cole for another great day in South Korea!