the best thing, part II

I'm definitely behind a few days on these little travel posts of mine but K is back to work this week so here's to catching up... and jeers to the kidney stones that I passed two nights ago whilst not having access to modern medicine.  Yippee.


Tuesday Karl and woke up and he lovingly brought me Dunkin Donuts and a latte in bed- Happy Valentines Day to me!! And obvi my mom sent Karl & I a VDay card with a treat inside.  Duh.  Also it should be noted that they actually do put lots of nuts in their 'toffee nut lattes,' not an appetizing surprise. Then we ventured out for our first subway experience {which we owned.  And by owned, I mean we didn't ever get caught in the violently closing subway doors, which I did see happen, twice.} on our way to a day-long bus tour of the city... after one seriously extensive walking search for said bus, we found it, enjoyed some KFC for lunch, and had an awesome day of exploration! We saw palaces, the president's home, the national museum of Korea, stopped at most of the major shopping districts, and were just pumped full of information on the history an culture of Korea.  The museum was really neat- the actual building itself was gorgeous and architecturally stunning and the contents were amazing- the history of Korea is so much more extensive and dates back just exponentially further than that of the US so it was pretty amazing to walk thru- every exhibit was in English which was pretty neat and humbling because our museums certainly don't have Korean explanations on each exhibit, not that I know of at least. In Itaewon I bought a few very large, breakable, and awkwardly sized souvies that Karl sweetly toted on and off that dang tour bus the whole day- also I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to get those things back to the states :/  Another prob for another day.   For dinner we did some research and decided on an Italian restaurant a taxi ride away so, while the taxi did supposedly take us to the right address, we never did find the restaurant.   We did, however, find a different Italian/pizza place and enjoyed a very delicious Valentines pizza and coke date.  Perfection. Anywayz, the day was great- lots of walking and feeling very unamerican and unlazy.  Enjoy some piczz!

The structure in the middle of this picture is an actual palace- it was so interesting how the city of Seoul just built itself around 5 different palaces... normal.

Since we couldn't have gotten off at each of the tour bus stops and really spent adequate time, we decided to tour one of the palaces on Wednesday.  I'm so glad we did because we were able to give our best energy to that tour and it was totally worth it!  Such a cool experience!  We woke up, took the subway (total pros), bought tickets to the english tour of "The Secret Garden," aka the expensive tour and only one in english, and then went and had breakfast at a coffee that was shop right across the street while we waited.

You can actually see the palace right behind Karl in this picture

The palace was huge!  It was actually like 3 palaces all connected at different points that made up the whole dynasty.  All of the different buildings within the palace walls were for different purposes for the king or workers- this building was a library

the men & women "noblemen" slept separately- husband & wives included- beginning at age 7.  this little doorway (was like 4 feet tall) connected the male sleeping quarters to the female

male dominance or something

We are standing right next to the ponds where the kings wrote poetry or something... and then played drinking games, according to our tour guide :/

This was such a great tour! It was so interesting and fun and we both learned so much about Korean culture and history.  After this tour, we went to a shopping district that I had wanted to visit and then ended our night early with a shady dinner at our hotel...


I'm already enjoying reliving this trip and I haven't even left yet!  I am so enjoying being here with Karl!
Hannah K.C. Burton