and this is the map we had! For some reason, ours looked more confusing!
The subway even had shops down there at one point! You get off your line and there are these shops right there. And like all the other AP's have said, those subways are spotless!! I wanted Taylor to see these teenagers and their colorful Converse shoes so I took this picture on the subway for her.
We found the entrance to the subway, Anguk stop. We went down the stairs and finally figured out that we needed to buy tickets from these automated machines. We obviously looked very lost because this very nice Korean lady came over to us and asked if we needed help. With broken English she asked where our stop was, Jamsil. We showed her on our hotel map and she punched in our stop, how many tickets, and put our money in the machine for us. Viola! We thanked her dearly and used our pass to get into the subway. Half way there we had to change to a different subway line. At one point we ended up above ground.
After some tension and discussion, we finally figured out which way the line was going and found our way. We made it to Lotte world, the subway stop was right near an entrance to it! I'll post pictures first. This huge fountain with sculptures was at the entrance.
Lotte World consists of a mall,
an ice skating rink,
and Tuesday March 2nd, was South Korea's Independence Day, so this place was packed! Oh, the whole upper level here was a small amusement park!
Here's a video of part of it.
This place was huge, it also had a movie theater, tons of places to eat, tons of shops, a Toys R Us at one end, and I even saw these that were for sale.
We were starting to get a little hungry, and then we found this place!
It was packed. They seated us, gave us menus, which were in Korean and English. We waited for them to come back to take our order and some time went by. I saw this weird round thing on the edge of the table, mounted there. We soon realized all the tables had them. I said something to Mike about maybe we were to push it for service. He said try it. So I did and the girl walked right up and took our order. We had a salad from the salad bar and ordered a pizza. I would have taken a picture of the round thing on the table but was surrounded by Koreans and didn't want to look like a tourist! lol The food came soon, and it was good! I liked my first tastes of Korean food, but this was a great reminder of home!
After lunch we found the Lotte Mart. It's a huge grocery store that was in the Lotte World Mall. On one end they had fresh everything, seaweed, all kinds of seafood, meats, etc. then on the other end was the actual groceries. I ran across these and had to take a picture. I tried to be slick so it was with the iPod. :)
We walked all over that place. I was totally exhausted! I was so tired, I could not remember where we came into that place! We saw an Information desk and the very nice girl told us where the subway entrance was. We found it and had to buy another pass to get back to our hotel. I guess we still looked puzzled because an older gentleman came up and asked us where we were going, he had very good English, btw. We told him Anguk and he pointed to the right direction the line was going so we went there after purchasing our passes. We used our pass to get into the station and realized we were taking the line going in the opposite direction was came. We looked at our map and saw that we could keep going in that direction, that we were just going to make a big circle. The man knew exactly what we needed to do, it's just that we didn't! lol No biggie! We made it back safe and sound and soon realized, Seoul is a very unique place. The people take care of their streets (no trash cans everywhere), they take pride in their subways (so incredibly CLEAN) and they take pride in their city! I have a lot of respect for them, something this country of ours seem to have lost.
We made it back to our hotel, very tired. We rested for a bit, passed the iPod back and forth to send pictures through email and so I could post pictures to FB (really ...I'm not addicted!). Then later we went to Insadong - again! This is a short video that Mike took. Insadong street is really long, but here's a taste. I bought most of my things on this trip. I also bought little coin purses and dollar trinkets for the girls and boys in Taylor's class. All in all it was an awesome day, very tired in the end. We couldn't make it to 9 pm, so we turned in early again.
