The new pillow was a moderate success, and my health has improved by about 25%, just in time for my last day in Seoul. Before leaving the hotel I came across a Korean drama (K-Drama) on TV, there weren't any subtitles but I could still follow what was going on pretty well, it was just a shame I had no way to figure out the name of the show.
I walked from the hotel to the nearby cable car station at the bottom of
Mt Namsan. I was planning to walk up to the top of the mountain for a challenge and then maybe get the cable car back down, only the cable car service was unavailable for servicing from 9:00am to 1:00am every Monday - damn. The distance to the top was about 1.2 kilometres but it was quite a steep hill so it took some time. There was a good view from a lookout point about halfway up, but the skyline of Seoul wasn't so photogenic, at least in the direction I was facing.
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| Seoul lookout. |
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| Padlock fence, pretty sure I've seen this somewhere before... |
Just before reaching
N Seoul Tower at the summit the rain started, so there was even less value in going up to the observation deck as it had quickly become very overcast. I did stop in at the gift shop which had decent prices for their souvenirs, I was quite amazed. After spending a bit of time at the top I headed back down the same way, made one wrong turn along the way but made it to the hotel.
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| N.S.T. |
After getting a dry pair of socks and failing to navigate the online check-in for my next flight with Korean Air I departed for the Yongsan district. My neck was now feeling just horribly stiff and sore, so I'm guessing the new pillow was just good enough to get through the night, but with the side effect of causing long term neck pain - now I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the previous situation.
The station came out inside I'Park Mall, which was another one of those sad department stores, maybe slightly better than the others. On the top floor there was an e-sports stadium which I believe is like a theatre where they broadcast video game tournaments such as Star Craft, so I looked in on that but there was nothing scheduled for the day.
The main reason for stopping at Yongsan was to browse the
Yongsan Electronics Market. I hadn't read too much about this place but I had an idea that it might be like a smaller version of Akihabara in Tokyo. It took far too long to work out how to get from the mall to the market, as no signs existed, and probably with good reason I soon discovered. I'm not even sure if I'd call it a market, there was a couple of streets and one small building with various electronics, but one section was dedicated to just CCTV equipment while another had various computer parts. I was hoping there would be a lot of video games, merchandise and collectibles, but there was almost none of that.
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| Yongsan. |
Seoul Forest Park was next on the list, I wasn't sure how much of a forest could possibly exist within a highly populated inner city area. After entering and reviewing the map it turned out to be a good size but I think, as the clever name suggests, it was more of a park than a forest. There was a Waterworks Museum which could have been great or probably really bad, but it was closed as with most things on Monday. The main attraction instead was the deer corral - a place with deers - so I went in that direction. You could buy packets of food to give to the deer if you wanted, but that just seems like you are doing the park rangers job for them. On the way out of the park I passed a sculpture area which had some reasonably good artwork.
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| Just need the electric company now. |
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| Do not feed the bears. |
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| Sculptures. |
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| Another sculpture. |
I was going to make one more stop at the Gangnam district, but it felt like it was going to be one thing too many for the day. Instead I went back to Seoul Station to get my train ticket sorted out for the airport, then searched around the Lotte Mart. This was actually the closest thing to a K-Mart by far, I even discovered an unadvertised pillow section ! They didn't have any normal pillows, just those stupid memory foam ones, but there was a range of big soft cushions that could easily become a substitute pillow for about $10 so I grabbed one of those.
I found a Quiznos for dinner, which is basically the same thing as a Subway. I can't remember if they had a veggie patty on the menu in the USA, but they had a veggie delight in Seoul so that was good enough. After dinner I made it back to the hotel to prepare for my final destination.
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| Should have asked for no olives. And definitely no mushrooms ! |
- Seoul Summary
- Good
- Better soft drink choices
- Cool tune when the train is arriving (might get annoying eventually)
- Lots of similarities to Japan
- Mountains nearby for hiking
- Not too crowded
- Quicker to get around on the subway (a little)
- Toilets at all the subways
- Some have this weird ball of soap on a stick for everyone to share !?
- Bad
- Being sick
- More expensive than China
- Not many good restaurants and shops in my area
- Street names are really confusing
- The department stores
- The hotel !!!
- Wasted a lot of time trying to find places
- Missed Out
- Baseball game
- Mt Inwangsan
- Namsan cable car
- Seodaemun Prison History museum
- Seolleung Park
- Trick Eye museum
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