Day 2 in Seoul .....

Day 2 we woke up at 4 am.  I'm really surprised we slept till then, but we were really exhausted from our long trip to Seoul.  We got up, showered, I got on the iPod and posted pictures, checked into Facebook (I'm not addicted ... really!)  then went down to breakfast.  After breakfast, I told Mike I wanted to try and make it to Lotte World today.  We thought we'd just take a taxi, but the nice girl at the front desk said the subway was better and cheaper.  We found a map near their front desk and she showed us how to find the subway entrance near our hotel and where our stop would be.  Okay, take a look at this picture below. There are 9 different subway routes.  Oh yeah, for some country people who have never seen a subway much less rode on one, this was scary! lol This is a picture that was on a wall,

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.

Two leaving for Seoul.....

Where do I start? Well, here we are at the Nashville Airport, getting ready to find our gate and wait for boarding.  Taylor was so sad when we were leaving, she tried to hold back the tears, um ... so did her dad. I did well, I tried to be strong for Taylor, told her we loved her and we'd be back soon. And that I'd bring her back lots of goodies! Don't think that helped much. :(

So it was Saturday afternoon, 5:20 at Nashville Airport.  After finding out gate, we sat back and chilled for our hop flight that would take us to Atlanta.  We got to Atlanta in a flash and found our gate, after some backtracking.  Then we sat down for our 4 hour layover.  It went by kind of fast, but I was getting so tired.  Our plane:

was sitting there for 3 hours, so it was ready to take us to Korea.  We boarded at 12:00 am, and by this time I was already exhausted.  Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was dread of the 14 hour flight, maybe I was overwhelmed.  We boarded, clicked in, and we were off very soon.

Okay, so it was a very very VERY long flight.  I have never been on a flight that long before and jetlag? Is the most horrendous thing that my  body will ever by subjected to!!  The flight was okay.  I tried to watch a few movies, but was so tired, all I wanted to do was sleep.  I had a neck pillow, thought that would help, but when you're in the sitting position for 14 hours, it's really hard to try and sleep, just couldn't get comfy.  By the time we got there, we were sick, physically, just sick.  So enough about the bad stuff!

We arrived at 6:30 am, Monday morning at Incheon Airport, dragging I must say.  We found our luggage, found the place to exchange our money for this:

and then went toward the exit to look for our driver.  There he was with our sign.

He seemed to be in a big hurry, so we were really moving trying to keep up with him. I didn't even get a picture with the guy. I threw the sign at Mike and said SMILE!  Outside was chaos, cars pulling up to get people, pulling out in front of other people, horns honking - what the heck?!?  Okay we're not in Kansas anymore Mike!

Our driver was on the phone with someone for a minute, then a van pulled up.  The guy got out, then put our bags in, we hopped in and we're off...fast too I might add! It was a nice ride to Seoul, until we got to downtown.  Traffic was bad, really bad. I thought Nashvillians couldn't drive.  Cars just muscle their way over to each lane, horns honking. Funny - I never once saw...um....the bird fly!   :-O  Drivers didn't seem to get annoyed at the honking, they just kept going. AND, all these cars fighting for the same lane, would get so incredibly close to each other, within inches.  It was about an hour trip to Seoul to the Somerset Palace, our hotel.

Very nice hotel, I must say!  We arrived at our hotel around 9 am.  Checkin wasn't till around 12 pm. So we had 3 hours to kill, and we were so beat.  All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep. I felt so bad.  Mike felt the same too.  The nice people at the front desk said we could check back with them to see if the occupants leave their room early, until then, we couldn't do anything.  We left our luggage with them and were informed there was a lounge area on the second floor.

Yes that did nicely.  I perched myself on a chair and Mike actually layed down on this couch.  We rested a couple of hours, then Mike went to check with the front desk to see if our room was available.  He didn't come back for 15 minutes.  He'd already taken our luggage to the room and said our room was ready! YES!! Oh what a relief! Loved the room, very nice, comfy, and accommodating.

The back of the hotel had this little garden area.  It looked really neat from floors up.

Mike layed down on the couch again, just to "rest his eyes" and I proceeded to unpack every single thing from our 4 suitcases.  Yeah,  I'm that much of a neat freak!

I finished putting things away everywhere and then decided, I'll rest too.  Mike feel asleep for a couple of hours and so did I.  He woke me at 4 pm and said get up, or we won't sleep tonight.  We both showered and headed out to find some supper. We were starving.  I wanted to go to Insadong!!!  It was just a couple of blocks down the street from our hotel.

Insadong is kind of like a flea market between buildings.  I loved it, infact we went there 4 times maybe?  Taylor would have loved it! We found a little restaurant that was on the third floor of a merchant on the Insadong street.  It said Italian, so we thought how far off from Italian can you get in Seoul? We recognized Pizza on the menu and said that's what we wanted.  The pizza came and it looked somewhat normal.  It was a very thin crust, had tomatoe sauce, and one big drop of melted cheese on each slice.  Odd looking, but tasted good.  After dinner, we were tuckered out.  We made our way back to our hotel, by then it was around 8 pm.  It wasn't long before we went to sleep, early in Seoul but it was 7 am in the US!

Okay so that's about the jist of our first day.  There were some other tid bits, but the little guy is awake and this has to wait!  Stay tuned, might have Day 2 in a week or so! lol