Well, not really, but I think that would make a great song!
I had a nice time in Seoul, though it was a little too hot and crowded for my tastes.
We took a sort of mini-van taxi to Seoul from Daegu. It cost us slightly more than it would have if we had taken the KTX (Express Train) and I think it took about the same amount of time. The best thing though was that it was door to door. Rather than having to haul our luggage to the street to catch a cab and then haul it through the train station and then from Seoul station to another cab, we simply put it in the van at our dormitory and took it out at our hotel. Easy!
I don't know if all cars in Korea have them, but our driver had this GPS type thing that kept talking the whole way to Seoul (it wasn't the only thing in the van that talked the whole way though). The funniest thing was when he went over the speed limit. Normally, there was this gentle woman's voice telling him to turn right or left or give other directions, but when he passed the speed limit, which was 110 kilometers, a child's voice would start yelling baek ship, baek ship!!! (110) - it was so annoying he had to slow down.
Elizabeth and Sue stayed at some little motel and Sonja and I stayed at the Crown Hotel in Insadong. The hotel was from another era. It was a little on the old side and the furniture was funky. But it was good for one night.
Insadong is a lovely area. There is a nice street called Insadong that is lined with all kinds of shops - clothes, souvenirs, coffee, food, paint brushes, fans, and my favorite - the tea shops.
I love tea. I like it more than coffee. And Korea has some great teas. I don't know if they are officially "tea" since many of them are not made from tea leaves, but from other things such as corn, corn silk, persimmon, cinnamon, etc. I had a tea made from dates that had pine nuts, almonds and some other stuff in it. It was supposed to be very healthy.
We walked down Insadong street, stopped and had lunch and then Sonja started a search for another piece of luggage. Apparently Insadong was not the place to get luggage. I went back to our hotel and took a nap.
In the evening we went out for another walk. It was a little cooler and the street was not as crowded as it had been in the afternoon. We went to a nice little restaurant on a back alley and had a great final dinner.
We ordered too much food. We had steamed pork with different leaves that we wrapped it in and a kimchi pancake. We also ordered maekali - a traditional fermented rice beverage which was slightly alcoholic. Everything was great. I especially liked the 70's/80's pop ballads that were playing. It made me want to go to karaoke.
It was a nice stop in Seoul. I think I would like to go back there when it is not so hot. The nice thing about Seoul was that all of the restaurants we saw had menus that had English translations as well as the name of the food written in Roman alphabet along with Korean letters. Eating was definitely easier than in Daegu.
Still, I liked Daegu because we were special. There were so many foreigners in Seoul that nobody got excited when we went into their store or restaurant. In Daegu we often got special treatment. I'll always remember the people there, like the lady who ran the Barbeezone chicken and beer place, or the nice guy in the produce store who wanted to communicate so badly that we tried speaking in Japanese (I realized that I can't speak Japanese).
Now I'm back in SF and after a good sleep, I am missing Korean food!
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