15:41 Walked up to Seoul Tower. Maybe "walk" isn't the right word. we found a trail that looked promising, but it dead-ended not too far up. A kindly older Korean gentleman asked where we wanted to go, and we told him the tower, and he said "Follow me, I'm going there too." We set off on a very rustic trail with a "No Trail" sign at the front of it. It was a pretty strenuous hike, made worse by the fact that blatantly older people were kicking our asses up the hill. It's fairly warm here too. The hike was worth it, though. The tower area was really cool.
There were some women drummers performing,
and tons of people and picnickers, and very few white devils like us.
Got a few excellent shots, I think.
Went to the top of the tower for W7000. Almost got lunch up there, but for W36,000, it didn't seem worth it. We walked down the hill, passing many women of an age in The States where they'd probably take a power chair just to get to the dairy section in the supermarket. . . walking up the hill. The Koreans are very serious about their hiking.
We ate at some little restaurant on a side street. I had bibimbap, which is almost the korean national dish.
It's a mixture of a bunch of stuff and rice in a hot stone bowl. The entrees came with about eight side dishes.
It was another excellent meal, and cost about W5000 ($5.43) each. Bailing from the tower-top restaurant was totally the right idea.
We rode the subway back (W1000) to the station that exits right outside Adam's apartment. There's a 7-11 in the same building, so Adam bought some food and an umbrella, for it looks like it may rain.
It had stopped raining by the time we went outside. We walked up to the big train station that is also a big shopping center.
We visited one of my favorite places in any country: the supermarket! This one was impressive and crowded, especially for 8 pm on a Sunday. Adam bought some groceries while Jason, Steve, and I tried to stay out of the way. Almost nothing had English labels, so if you didn't immediately recognize an item, you were probably out of luck. The prices seemed comprable to The States. I didn't take pictures in there, since I have no idea what the rules are about that, though in the states, supermarkets are often no-photo zones, for whatever reason. I'd definitely like to go back .
We walked home, with me stopping with me stopping a lot to take pictures.
I use my 50mm f/1.8 lens for all the night stuff as I need the extra speed. I can use my mid-sized gorilla pod with that lens, but the bigger lens is too heavy. I think I'll add the SLR Zoom Gorillapod to my Amazon wishlist.
Adam made some fried pot stickers and chicken for dinner. Even the prepared food here is good. Had a shot of soju, the national firewater. It's really not bad. Uploaded some shots to Zooomr (marked as Friends and Family only, so if you want to see my unprocessed, un-geotagged shots, let me know and I'll add you as a friend or family) hung out, and watched strange Korean/Japanese TV.
Not sure what the plan is tomorrow. Jason said something about a "death march", but he overstates. It's 1:00 am, time to find out how jetlagged I am.
(View my entire set of Korea trip photos here on Zooomr)
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