Stopover in Seoul

Everything went into the bags OK and we were just under the weight limit. We’d opted to stop over in Seoul for a couple of days on route to New Zealand.

We made it to Korea without any bother, though the flight was long enough.  Having carefully practised pronouncing Seoul in what we thought was the correct way, we quickly found that the local pronunciation is much closer to 'sole', ie how we used to pronounce it.  'Seoul' seems likely to be the only Korean word that will master while we are here, the language, even when rendered into European characters, is totally opaque.  Luckily many of the people have at least some English and gestures have done for the rest.

Toilet seat control panel

This is a clean, modern, thriving and sophisticated city, quite unlike Asian cities we have visited previously although some of these may now have changed as well.  It is a slightly quirky mix of Western and Asian, but also a very friendly place and everyone we have come across has been polite and helpful.  On the advice of a friend we are staying in a large hotel in the downtown area.  The hotel has 23 floors and a large illuminated sign towards the top, which has been great help when trying to find our way back to the place at the end of the day. The control panel on the side of the toilet seat has however completely flummoxed us; there is no obvious response to pressing any of the numerous buttons but it is certainly heated and lat night the bowl was suffused with a blue glow!

King's library pavilion

We have been going round royal palaces and the photo attached shows the style, although they differ in size quite a lot, but they are all basically made from wood and painted in bright colours.  Once we were 'palaced-out', we moved onto the markets and a token department store. 

Weird foods in Lotte

The biggest of these is the Lotte store which has the biggest food hall – by a long way - that we have ever seen.  Both the appearance and the variety of food on offer is astonishing.  At the other end of the scale the street food also looks very appealing; the Koreans like their meat however and it isn't easy to know what you are buying.  Last night we braved some local food and really enjoyed it.  Western style restaurants and fusion food are also common, but rather more expensive.



Today we’ve been in the arty area of the city and having visited the folk museum, which told us a bit about the history and culture, we ventured up the streets where the art galleries are. The picture below amused us and reminded us of something out of Monty Python. The strategically positioned trees were apparently real although nothing else has leaves on at the moment.

The Mona Lisa

It’s pretty cold here, although not too bad when the wind isn’t blowing. We even saw the sun for a few minutes, but I think we’ll be glad to get to the longer daylight hours and warmer temperatures of New Zealand.