Our short 6 night trip to Korea was so packed full of fun and interesting sites and experience, I had to break it into two posts! The first post was HERE and focused on a lot of the food experiences we had. This post focuses on our visits to the beautiful palaces and shrines and also to the DMZ, also known as the border between South and North Korea.
There are many palaces within the city of Seoul to explore. Check their opening times and days, as they are often closed one day a week, so you may only be able to do a couple a day. Also, they are humongous and you will walk miles and miles in one day!
Changdeokgung Palace on a beautiful sunny
Gates at Changdeokgung
Everyone on their cell phones at Changdeokgung Palace. Can
you say SELFIE?
You can rent the traditional outfits while you are there, and we talked about it, but we were a little self conscious to be a 50 something year old woman in this beautiful dress that so many young girls were wearing. It totally would have been amazing photo opportunity though, so, I sorta wish we had done it.
Wonderful angles and roof lines at Changdeokgung
This place was huge! We kept wandering and wandering and had
this back corner of the palace to ourselves
We walked forever on the grounds in a free walking tour. They don't allow people to wander unattended at this palace. This is the Forbidden Garden at Changdeokgung.
Gyeongbokgung Palace (trying asking the taxi driver to take
you here... LOL).
Outside the gates on our first attempt to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace - it's closed on certain days of the week, so plan ahead!
Jongmyo Shrine- lots of ancestors behind those little doors!
Onto the DMZ, we hired a private car and driver for a tour to the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea. He picked us up at our hotel at about 8am and we didn't return until well after 6pm. While this was the biggest expense we had on our trip (besides hotel), it was definitely a great investment. He took us to Seoul's War museum and took us through the important historical background before taking us to the DMZ. We learned so much and had a much more emotional experience because of the care of our tour guide.
Nobody told us the North Korea was going to be beautiful! This is looking from the observation center across the water towards North Korea. You could use telescopes to view the "fake" cities set up across the water. You could tell they were fake as there was absolutely no people or cars to be seen. We were able to view one lone cyclist riding down the road with our telescope. Very weird.
There were displays of all the countries that came to support South Korea, there were many from around the world honored by showing their uniforms of their armed forces.
I have to say, I cried when I read this quote:
"Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country
they never knew and a people they never met"
What they don't tell you is how much equipment the Russians left in Korea for the North Koreans to use against South Korea. They were severely at a disadvantage, as this chart shows what each side had on hand at the onset of the war.
Sad to stand in front of the plaque for all the people from Washington that perished in Korea, over 400 soldiers. It was a long corridor of plaques from all the US states, and countries from around the world. Each name honored.
This is the train station built on the railway that travels from South Korea to North Korea. It is the last stop in South Korea, but the train is unable to travel any farther north.. It is virtually new and unused. The map on the wall in the right of the photo shows that if North Korea was open to travel through, then travelers from South Korea could travel to Paris by train. Essentially South Korea is an island until North Korean relations improve.
The guards didn't seem to mind that we stole a little kiss.Okay, so they were mannequins.
After our trip to the DMZ, our wonderful driver took us to a modest neighborhood restaurant for duck BBQ. He told us that nowhere else in South Korea is duck common for grilling in the BBQ style. This tasted so delicious and look at how many little dishes of "stuff" you get" ? If you want more of anything, you just let them know. We had such a great day on this tour and spent over 10 hours with our driver. He was so wonderful with us, we couldn't have been happier with our private tour.
Onto something lighter now... one thing I wanted to do was to visit a Cat Cafe! LOL, go ahead and call me a crazy cat lady, I don't mind!
There was about 14 cats in the cafe, lots of them snoozing, can you imagine that?
You have to remove your shows and wear their cat slippers! How happy was I?
How about we end with a little piece of beautiful cake? We went into a small chain cafe for a cup of afternoon coffee and how could we not get this to share? We loved Korea so much, what a wonderful, exotic, friendly and comfortable place to visit. We are already planning our next trip!
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