Seoul – Travelling Mike https://www.travellingmike.com Travelling the world a little at a time. Sun, 03 Sep 2017 15:20:17 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 12149468 Seoul – Being lazy https://www.travellingmike.com/2013/08/21/seoul-being-lazy/ https://www.travellingmike.com/2013/08/21/seoul-being-lazy/#respond Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:33:23 +0000 http://www.travellingmike.com/?p=784 Time for a bit more of a summary of whats going on. On Monday the aim was to explore the War Memorial here in Seoul and check out the main museum there was only one problem, both of these places are closed on Mondays and we didn’t find that out till we arrived at the memorial. On a lighter note though the outdoor exhibits at the memorial were still available so we  had a look at those. From there on I headed to the Seoul N Tower (Basically the TV tower on top of the mountain in the middle of Seoul). To get up to the N Tower I took the cable car which is a short (but quite uphill) walk from the station. The cable car is 8,000 Korean Won for a round trip and it doesn’t include any entry to the tower itself. Entry to the tower is an extra 8,000 Won for the observation level and there’s other packages that include food in the various floors and so on. I’ve included some photos from the view and it is quite nice, 8,000 Won nice though I’m not sure, there isn’t much else up there and very little information on what you might be looking at. After the  tower I headed on to Jongmyo Shrine to see if I could get in with one of the last tours (access is via tours only), turns out I missed the last one by 10 minutes when I arrived.

After this I moved onto the Changdeok-gung Palace which has an amazing secret garden area as I got there though, closed! Turns out Monday isn’t the best day in Seoul if you don’t plan before hand.

On Tuesday with a bit more planning I headed out to Changdeok-gung and joined one of the guided tours in English of the secret garden section. It’s a rather long tour of about 90 minutes and can also be done in Chinese or Korean. It’s a simple 3km long walk around the closed off area of the grounds which the old kings used as their private area where access was by invitation only. I highly recommend the tour as its quite interesting and a lovely place to check out. If tours aren’t your cup of tea though the grounds can be roamed without a group in the summer months on a certain day of the week (not sure which one it is).

As usual there’s some photos below. We didn’t get up to much last night or today as we’re heading out of here tomorrow. We are off to the baseball tonight though so that should be fun!

]]> https://www.travellingmike.com/2013/08/21/seoul-being-lazy/feed/ 0 784 Seoul – Where to begin https://www.travellingmike.com/2013/08/19/seoul-where-to-begin/ https://www.travellingmike.com/2013/08/19/seoul-where-to-begin/#respond Mon, 19 Aug 2013 09:53:31 +0000 http://www.travellingmike.com/?p=716 Well this post has been in the makings for a while so lets begin at the start. We landed into Gimpo Airport (a smaller airport then Incheon and a bit closer to the city) and made our way to the hotel. At the airport though we rented ourselves a 4G internet dongle which can support 7 devices at once via wireless, a god send when traveling around on the streets and in need of Google Maps or a quick review from trip advisor or something. I’ll explain this in more detail in the wrap up.

Now onto Seoul itself. A good way to put it would be Tokyo but with wider streets and sidewalks (for the most part), a lot more Americans and far more drinking areas, all in all for a slightly cheaper price (though not on the same level as Taiwan). The hotel we’re staying in is actually a serviced apartments building smack bang in the middle of Insagong, an area that is fast becoming the major tourist section for Seoul. The hotel is called Fraser Suite Apartments and for three of us we have a three bedroom apartment and are paying about $80 USD a night which is just incredible (I’ll post photos of the joint before leaving… hopefully).

There was some other stuff I was going to say in the post but as I’ve been writing this over two days now I can’t remember most of it. Basically Seoul so far has been a relax and unwind and check out the occasional thing whilst enjoying the food and night life which hasn’t left too much time for the touristy bits. All I can say though the nightlife here is incredible with a huge choice of bars and very friendly locals who take any drunken opportunity to practice English or to “help you out”. Food wise its amazing with a huge choice of cuisines but for those who aren’t particular to spice its not a fun place, meanwhile for those who enjoy some spice it’s awesome. We have checked out some of the major palaces and gardens in the city for which there are quite a few photos beneath but I can’t promise too much more will be coming up post wise.

I’ll try and get a better post done next time though no promises. I can say though that on Mondays attractions in Seoul tend to be closed which is rather annoying but I did manage some good photos from the TV Tower here (known as the N Tower). I’ll throw those up some time in the next two days.

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