Seoul Train for Chuseok (추석)

When we arrived in Seoul, the next step was to find our hostel. We stayed in Itaewon, which is a big foreigners area near a US military base. Seoul has so many train lines! It's not like Boston where things you want to go see and do are typically on one or two lines. The sights to see are all sort of close together, or most of them are, but they are all on different lines! We had to transfer twice (so we took 3 different lines) just to get to our hostel! It was like that the entire vacation--transferring to get to the stop you wanted for sightseeing. We got to Itaewon without a problem, and the directions to our hostel were very clear and direct. It was very close to the subway station, but there was a massive hill leading up to it--that was not fun with all our bags. Apparently, it had been a really awful staircase, but it had been ripped out to make a new, better one, so when we arrived, it was just a hill with some wooden slats nailed in to use as stairs! It was a really crazy hill. We braved it and got to our hostel only to be informed that, due to a problem with one of the rooms, we were going to be moved to the newest of the buildings that SP Itaewon Guesthouse owns. They have 4 buildings in total. The person who basically runs that building, Dasha, helped us bring our bags back down the hill to the other hostel. I'm really glad we didn't have to walk up the hill every night. Our building was right down the street from the subway and not up any hill at all. Dasha was really great. He is very chatty and social. I feel bad for him because he is basically the only person at this hostel all day. He must get really bored. We settled in to our room, which we shared with a man from Massachusetts named JT! He had been in the army a while back, and in August, he and his buddies had a reunion, but he stayed. I think he is moving back to Korea permanently, but he had been in the hostel like a month already. He was really great and told us a lot about the area and what to see and do. We were in a 6 person mixed dorm with our own bathroom. It is a really clean and nice place to stay, so I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a hostel in Seoul. The one night, it was only JT and us, but the rest of the nights there were other people staying in the room also. By the time we got settled in the hostel, it was already pretty late. We went out to grab some quick food and then hit the sack for our first real day in Seoul.



We met up with Jonathan and Lily, two people from Daegu who we knew from orientation. They woke up really early and took KTX to Seoul that morning. We got them to their hostel building (they stayed in another building of the same hostel), and then we all went to Gangnam to get the bus to Everland. Everland is like Disney World. There are so many cool things to see, but not a lot of big rides. They even have their own little lion mascots: Laciun and Laila. The bus ride was about 40 minutes long and then you get a shuttle from the parking lot area to the front gates of Everland. We weren't able to sit together on the bus ride up to Everland, which was kind of annoying. They were doing a promotion for foreigners during Chuseok where all foreigners get 50% off, so each ticket was only 25,000 won! Great deal! The entire park was decked out with Halloween stuff, which we thought it was a little soon for, but it looked cool. We walked the entire way around the park, and our first stop was Zootopia. There were a ton of really cool animals like kangaroos, different birds, polar bears, and lion cubs! We even got to feed some cute little birds from our hands. Sometimes the animals were in cages that were really depressing and small, but other times they were outside in pens I'm sure they could have escaped from if they tried. The kangaroos were just in a an open, and I'm sure they could have hopped right over the fence, so that was a little weird. The birds we were feeding were just free to fly around the place, and there were other sections like that as well. In addition to the cool animals, there was one area that had rabbits, a sheep, a big, and even some puppies on display in cages. It was really depressing and strange! I didn't like that part very much. I didn't know farm animals and puppies were considered exotic. After Zootopia, we ended up in the European section. We went on the wooden roller coaster with the highest drop in the world. It was actually a really smooth ride, not rickety at all. The drop was huge, and the ride itself felt like it lasted a while. We also checked out a four season garden they had and a village made to look like Holland. As we were walking around, a parade with the characters started. It was a cute parade featuring some ghosts that looked rather unhappy. It was really funny. We took the cable cars back up the hill to another section of the park near the front gates, and we walked from there to the America section. We went on the Columbus ride, which was one of those pirate ships that swings back and forth. Instead of a pirate ship though, they called it the nina, staying with the Columbus theme. I actually didn't like that ride much at all. We got a little dizzy! That never usually happens to me, and I used to like those rides as a kid. Honestly, I know the middle doesn't go up as high, but it means you're going back and forth in the ship more quickly, and it was that motion that was making me dizzy. So when you go on those rides, don't sit in the middle! After that we walked around Aesop's Village, made to look like some of the fables he wrote. There, two people were dressed in Lacium and Laila costumes doing photos, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity! Our last stop for the night was dinner. We got steak burgers and fries from one of the restaurants at Everland. Something we now know about ordering food at a fast food restaurant: if you order the meal or "set," it automatically comes with Coke unless you specify which drink you want. One thing I noticed about baseball games and amusement parks and things like that in Korea is that they don't mark up the prices! They have reasonably priced food and drinks for you to buy. Throughout the day, we had pizza rolls, corn dog bites, and a corn dog in a baguette (called a French hot dog). We ate and then got back on the bus to Gangnam. We had to wait a while before we got on a bus, and we had to push a little to get on, but on the way back, we got seats together. We got back to Seoul and then back to our hostel just fine. We had kebabs and really delicious, thick Turkish ice cream at a Turkish restaurant. Itaewon is also a big area for multi-cultural food. You can find real American breakfast, Turkish, Irish, Italian, Indian, etc. It was really nice to have good food that wasn't Korean for a change. In addition to good food, there are also, randomly, a lot of antique store in Itaewon. We didn't go inside, but I was really surprised because they are the first antique stores I've seen here. After dinner, we just crashed for the night.

Gyeongbuk Palace and mountains

Gyeongbuk Palace Gate and skyscrapers

The next day was the first of two major site-seeing days in Seoul. Even in the two days, we weren't able to see and do everything I had planned. I'm a very ambitious vacationer, as Gianni told me many times. I know. I know. I need to cool it a little and enjoy things more. I just get so excited! We did get to see a bunch of really excellent things though. It was Thursday, which was actual Chuseok day. There were cultural events happening around the city, so we went to some of those. We started at Gyeongbuk Palace. We realized all the palaces were free entrance for Chuseok! Gyeongbuk Palace, and all the palaces in Seoul, were from the Joseon Dynasty, the last dynasty in Korea from 1392-1910. Gyeongbuk Palace is the largest palace and the primary one of the dynasty. All the palaces were burned down during wars with the Japanese, but they were rebuilt a few hundred years ago, so they are still pretty old. At the palace, we watched the changing of the guard ceremony, which is a much smaller deal than the changing of the guards in London, but still really neat to see. We walked around for a while before we got to the National Folk Museum, which is right near the palace. Above the museum was a beautiful tiered building that was, we were told, for the dowager Queen. There, they were having cultural activities for people to take part in. Gianni and I played a few traditional Korean games, which were all explained to us by a woman named Submarine--I kid you not! That's what she said her name was. First, we played a game where the board is the palace, and all the pieces are either soldiers or generals. If you roll doubles, you get to put your piece in the general's circle. If you roll other numbers, you place your soldiers on that number. Once you get two pieces on a number, that number is full. The goal is to try to get all the soldiers in the palace and then back out of the palace before the other person by rolling the dice. The next game looked really complicated. It had a whole lot of boxes with Chinese characters in it. Really though, it was similar to chutes and ladders. If you roll a number, you check the box to see what space to move up to when that number is rolled. It could be forward or backwards or even outside the main box. You may also roll a number that makes you lose up to 4 turns! The goal is to get to the top of the main box before the other person. The top box represents getting to the highest rank possible in society. I won the first game, and Gianni won the second, so it was fair. After the games, we walked around to see the other cultural activities. I paid 3,000 won to make a goose using straw. It was pretty fun, but they did most of it for me because I was hopeless. After the games, they had some music going on outside that we watched while trying some Korean food and alcohol. Songpyeon is a rice cake stuffed with some sort of sort of sweet, dry filling. They are a traditional food eaten at Chuseok, and we got to try some. We also had baekseju, a rice wine that tastes like soju but a bit fruitier and more palatable. After spending a good deal of the day at Gyeongbuk Palace, we went to Changdeok Palace for the last hour it was open. Seoul has 5 palaces, and on this trip we were able to see 3 of them fully. The palaces were all burned, damaged, or destroyed by the Japanese during different invasions and are now restored. Still, even the rebuilt versions are a few hundred years old in some cases. Gyeongbuk is the main palace, and Changdeok Palace is to the East of it. The name "Changdeokgung" means "Palace of Prospering Virtue" while "Gyeongbukgung" means "Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven." The word "gung" just means "palace." Changdeok Palace was built in 1405, but it was rebuilt in 1610 after the Japanese destroyed it. The two palaces were so different. They had all the same beautiful, ornate paint work, but Changdeok was so peaceful and it was laid out differently. It was also much smaller and had way less people, which is why I might have liked it better. Changdeok Palace and Gyeongbuk Palace each had the same general structure in the sense that you walk through an archway into a square area with a building in the middle of it. That's how the palaces tend to be laid out--walls that form a square outside, no landscaping inside the walls, and a building at the center of the square. This layout is then repeated a bunch to form the entire palace. Sometimes this isn't exactly the layout, but I noticed this pattern of buildings and walls repeating a lot. Changdeok is very famous for it's secret garden, which the kings used for relaxation and entertainment. It's the secondary palace, and I was told it was built as a kind of escape in case there was an outbreak of disease or war that threatened the main palace. I'm not sure why this palace would have helped though because it is only 1 subway stop away from Gyeongbuk, but whatever. We walked around for a bit and into what we thought was the secret garden. Turns out it was actually just a garden at the back of the third palace, Changgyeong Palace, which joins up with Changdeok. Changgyeong Palace means "Palace of Flourishing Gladness." That palace was built for the dowager queen. We walked around it's back garden for a bit. There is a pond and also some old monuments. The monument was apparently where they buried the placentas of the royal family when someone was born. It was a custom meant to wish them a long life. We didn't have time to look at the actual palace before they closed, so we left and went back to Itaewon. That night, we met up with one of my friends from my TEFL class back in April, Lish, and a few of her friends from Jinju where she teaches at Hogwon. We went to a kind of expensive Indian restaurant in Itaewon. I didn't know it would be so expensive. Still, it was really good Indian food, but a little on the spicy side for me. Even some dishes that, in the US, aren't spicy, were spicy here. After dinner, we went to High Street Market, a store that sells food items from English speaking countries. They even deliver to anywhere in South Korea. There is definitely a price differences because these are specially imported items, but it is nice to know that if I am really in desperate need of some food from home, I can get it. Also, if you wanted to get me something for Christmas, it might be worth ordering from there and having it delivered because at least you avoid the shipping fees from home, even if the food is a little pricey.