The Tourist’s View of Seoul

When my family came to visit this summer, we got the chance to head to some big tourist destinations in Seoul that we hadn’t been to. We even took the Seoul City Tour Bus – a hop-on, hop-off route to all the big tourist spots in Seoul- making us officially tourist material. The bus was a good way for us to get around to a few of the sites without too much walking for my jet-lagged family.

Namsangol Hanok Village

The Hanok Village was surprisingly interesting, mostly because of our volunteer tour guide, Reggie, a high school student practicing his English and nervously sharing historical anecdotes about the different houses. 

Korean Baseball: Fighting! Fighting!

For my family’s visit in June, we decided to head to our first Korean baseball game. After watching some games on TV and hearing from others, we anticipated Korean baseball games to be way more fun to attend than American games. We headed to Jamsil stadium to watch the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins.

We attempted to buy tickets online in advance but never did manage to figure it out, so we just showed up at the stadium before the game and bought tickets. At first this seemed bad; the tickets were for a general area without assigned seats, and everyone was sprawled on the empty seats, which were covered with food and blankets. Families were having picnics on the upper walking-area, and I thought we were going to spend the whole game standing up, with my grandma (in her eighties and visiting Korea!) standing the whole time. Luckily, once we started asking around, families very happily moved their jackets and food and other goods and offered us seats.

Roxie Learns About the Birds and the Bees

When we got Roxie, she loved being outside, but long walks were not her forte.  A week after adopting her, we walked her to Olympic Park and back (about 4 miles round trip).  She slept solidly for the next two days.  Within a month we were walking to Olympic Park regularly and Roxie was ready to play again after a drink of water at home.  After that we started to work on running.  Unfortunately for me, Roxie has to sniff everything when she is with just me or just Brittany, so she can’t run alone, but if we run together, Roxie can run about a kilometer now without stopping, and anytime we go up or down stairs we go at full speed.  We always break into a run for short intervals during walks.

Kaite Visits Seoul

On April 5th Ryan’s sister, Kaite, who was on her way to travel in Thailand, had a 12-hour layover here. We met her in the morning for a quick jaunt around Seoul.

After meeting Kaite way too early for Seoul (which usually wakes up around 10 o’clock in the morning, including the opening of Starbucks), we started near Yeouido Park, thinking we could catch some views of the cherry blossoms. But without proper research somehow never made our way to the actual park. Instead, we walked around the Han river, Kaite getting to experience the strange blend of a K-pop show and foot race.

After a quick wander around the area, we caught a cab to Namsan, where we did find a lovely park full of cherry blossoms. Two years ago Kaite visited us in DC when the blossoms were blooming, and came just in time again this year.

Spring in Seoul

 

We spent much of the winter confused about other people’s perception of how miserable winter is in Seoul. A lot of people tended to refer to winter as a dismal, dreary, endless wasteland. Yes, it was cold; it was winter. But it didn’t seem too bad.

Until spring came. In retrospect, winter in Seoul did seem awfully dreary. And endless. Fits of giggles followed the first day I didn’t have to wear a puffy coat to walk to work and could sit outside comfortably for longer than a few minutes. Coming from Colorado, we are pretty used to winter. The problem, I think, stems more from being crammed up in our tiny, yellow-linoleumed apartment for 5 months with only the end-of-winter realization that taxis in Seoul are absurdly affordable.