Korea Day 17 evening

After spending most of the afternoon at the palace, Molly, Joann and I went to Myeong-Dong to meet up with Hailey. We were going to climb up the Seoul tower. It is a tower up on a hill, a smaller version of the CN Tower with a great view of the city. We walked up to the start of the climb and then it was 1.2km of stairs straight up! It was quite a bit of exercise for yours truly as, I must admit, I am out of shape. I had to stop a few times and I was sweating but I did make the climb. Unfortunately, it was a hazy day and the view was not the best.

We did not pay to go up the tower, we just looked out the observation area at the base of the tower. It was funny, there are long chain link fences and couples buy a pair of locks and come and lock them on this fence. I guess it is a symbol that they will be together forever. Here is a section of the fence.

There is also a cable car that takes you up and down but the line-ups are quite long. I have to admit, I also felt a sense of accomplishment for making the climb!

I found a few pictures of the tower on the internet. Here is what the tower looks like. There are restaurants and observations decks at the bottom and at the top.

Here is a view of the hill that the tower is on - it is this hill that we climbed up!

Afterwards, we went into Myeong-Dong to wander around. This area is a MAJOR shopping area with lots of upscale stores, including most Western stores (Gap, Body Shop, Athlete's World, ...). It is unbelievable busy with people packing the streets beside street vendors who sell anything from hats to fresh pineapple to belts to shirts. It is a bit overwhelming but interesting as well. We wandered around and then Molly and Hailey took us to a little restaurant. We had my favourite food so far. The place only serves one dish and you just order small, medium or large. The medium fed all four of us. The Cass also tasted great after the climb. The dish consisted of chicken pieces, glass noodles, potatoes, carrots, onions, hot chili peppers and an amazing sauce. The meal was unbelievably tasty! I am trying to get a recipe so I can attempt to make it when I get home. It is really like a stew and I'm sure that it sat cooking all day to make the food tender and flavourful!

There were tons of street vendors selling snacks and everthing looked so good. I was so full from the meal that I couldn't eat anything else but it was very tempting! There were big chunks of pineapple an melon on sticks that they had sitting on huge blocks of ice, potatoes that they cut into a big swirl, put on a stick and deep fry so it is one long swirl of potato chip, and these unusual candies where they take some filling and wrap it with what looks like string, to name a few. Molly bought some of these stringlike candies and I tried one. When I first bit into it, it felt like I was biting into cotton batting but then I could taste the delicious nutty centre and then the 'string' melts like sugar. The dessert type foods here are tasty but not nearly as sweet as their counterparts back home.

Joann and I stayed and wandered for a bit and then went home. It was a great day!