Oct 27th - Nov 6th
When I told my parents I was going to live in Korea for a year they were happy for me, but not necessarily bursting with excitement to come visit. Fortunately though, my Mum realised she could make the trip with a 6 day layover in Abu Dahbi and that swung the vote.
It was wonderful to see them again looking so happy and healthy a year into their retirement and I was excited to give them a massive culture shock with Korean food, language and general oddness. As it turns out, this required no input from me and simply being in Asia proved traumatising enough.
Following what I can only imagine was a very dry, sober stay in Abu Dhabi, we went straight from the airport to our [small, seedy] hotel in Gangnam (Bangbae Olso Hotel, I wouldn't recommend it), and then straight to a bar where we ordered the biggest pitcher of beer we could find. To give my parents that extra special welcome to Korea there was even Premiership football on the TV!
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| Welcome to Korea Dad! |
Gyeongbokgung
After an alcohol induced nights sleep in our pokey room we headed out for some sightseeing, to Gyeongbokgung, for some Korea history. The palace is beautiful, set against a backdrop of mountains it feels a million miles away from the centre of the capital city. The autumnal colours in the gardens and the crisp October sunshine were just perfect for our family reunion (gush gush).
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| Centre of Seoul? Chincha? |
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| Family holiday shot. |
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| I heart Autumn in Korea |
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| The National Folk Museum is inside the palace walls |
Insadong
Insadong is supposed to be the cool, arty neighbourhood of Seoul but it was so busy it felt more like a theme park. The touristy shops had some good traditional [tacky] presents and I really liked Ssamzie shopping gallery, a spiralling ramp of arty shops and boutiques with a centre courtyard and trendy cafes. We had some traditional bulgogi for lunch and my parents got their first taste of kimchi! It didn't go down well.
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| Ssamzie shopping |
We walked all the way through Insadong to the Han River which was being decorated for the Seoul Lantern Festival. Having exhausted my poor jet lagged parents, we jumped in a taxi to go to Namsan Tower but failed when we got there and realised the queue for the cable car would take us into the early hours of the morning [I didn't dare suggest we take the stairs!].
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| The Han at dusk. |
Next stop: Cheonan....
1 comment:
Steph failed to mention that it is custom to order food first if you want a beer...so almost approaching midnight we ordered the only thing recognisable....fried chicken. Whenwe were served 4 fried eggs we assumed they were serving us pre-natal fried chicken. However eggs and beer went down well and an hour later we actually got fried chicken. Most strange !!
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