Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: The Portuguese Connection (2012)
From the Palace to the Tower
- a route taken by some well-known unfortunates in British history. But this was 21st-century Seoul, and our journey was to be a much happier affair. Our breakfast venue on this occasion was a French-themed coffee shop on the main road near the hotel. This one had a far wider selection of bakery items from which to choose, including some specifically designed with breakfast in mind. When we were ready we retraced our initial route from the previous day, but travelled one stop further to Gyeongbokgung Station, which was fairly obviously named after our first objective: Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace), a restored / rebuilt palace complex based on an original that dated from 1395.
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extensive grounds and a museum, this palace's main claim to
fame among tourists is its Changing of the Guard ceremony
and we were in good time to catch the 10am performance. We began by having a look around the site of the ceremony and managed to catch a rehearsal taking place just outside the main courtyard of the palace. It was odd how huge numbers of tourists seemed to descend on the place at the last minute - perhaps they knew just how cold it was for standing around outside and stayed put in their coaches for as long as possible! |
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| ABOVE: Site recce, eavesdropping on the rehearsal, and then the ceremony begins! | ||||
The ceremony proper began on schedule at 10am with a single, startling boom from a large drum. It was certainly a colourful affair, although some of the participants' facial hair looked a little suspect!
| BELOW: Changing of the Guard ceremony in full swing | |||||
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Once the ceremony was over, we began our walk around the extensive grounds and outbuildings of the palace complex, which reminded me time and again of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The tourist numbers were almost as bad too, but again as in Beijing, seemed to drop off dramatically the further into the complex we moved.
| BELOW: After the Changing of the Guard ceremony, we proceeded to explore the grounds of Gyeongbok Palace | |||||
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By this time, we were both ready for a warming cup of coffee in the attractive coffee shop of the National Palace Museum of Korea. The 11am ceremony was just finishing when we re-emerged. We then walked down the wide boulevard Sejong-daero, which ran from the palace to City Hall. Having seen the latter the previous afternoon, we stopped just over half way at the unusual feature known as Cheonggyechon Stream. Apparently this attractive channel featuring a walkway and a stream, which runs below normal street level, was once an open sewer with an elevated highway running above it - nice! Before embarking on this rather unconventional section of our itinerary, we followed the pattern of the previous day and enjoyed a freshly-made snack from a street food stall. On this occasion, we had fresh ginseng root, boiled in fish broth then deep fried and served with a spicy chilli sauce and a cup of the delicious broth. Once again, very good indeed!
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LEFT: Coffee at the museum and catching the end of the next ceremony |
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RIGHT: Heading down Sejong-daero and then along the Cheonggyechon Stream |
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We left the
walkway in good time to find our way to the bustling
shopping area of Insadong. At this stage we weren't too far
from the Buddhist temple that we had visited the previous
day; I almost felt that I was starting to get the hang of
this city! Spotting a restaurant that rejoiced in the name of Good Morning Hanoi, we decided that it wouldn't do any harm at all to rekindle some Vietnamese memories. The food was very nice indeed but the portions were, shall we say, American-sized. |
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| ABOVE: Our lunch stop in Insadong was Good Morning Hanoi |
After we had eaten our fill, the next move was to ride the subway to Chungmuro and walk the short distance to Namsangol Hanok Village, another preserved traditional Korean village, this time in a corner of the large Namsan Park. While this village was similar to the example that we had visited the previous morning, there were also differences. Namsangol had no roads running through it and it was a genuine museum; nobody lived in the houses.
| RIGHT: Namsangol Hanok Village |
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We then strode onwards and upwards into the main part of Namsan Park, which frequently looked very pretty with the trees decked out in autumn colours. Our objective was the base station for the cable car leading up to the Seoul Tower, a communication and observation tower that represented the highest point in this vast city. As ever in Seoul, actual distances turned out to be much greater than they appeared on a map, but for the most part it was a scenic and enjoyable walk. We eventually boarded a crush-loaded cable car for Namsan Mountain, then transferred to an elevator for the final ascent to the tower's observation deck. While we were whisked vertically aloft, a video was shown on - would you believe? - the ceiling of the lift. The views from the top were badly affected by the hazy conditions, but this came as no surprise and therefore was not a source of disappointment.
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| ABOVE: Walking through Namsan Park | ABOVE: Seoul Tower and view from Observation Deck | ||||
 ABOVE: The Seoul Tower's so-called "Sky Toilet" ... definitely a loo with a view! |
One notable feature of the observation deck, at least for us males, was the so-called Sky Toilet (see picture on left). I couldn't recall ever seeing anything quite like this before. When you 'gotta go', you get to admire the panorama while attending to business! We then made a three-stage return to earth, first to the base of the tower, then to the lower cable car station and finally using a curious outdoor elevator to reach normal street level. This rather odd-looking contraption was an instant reminder of our time in Lisbon. |
 ABOVE: Another Portuguese connection? This street elevator reminded me of Lisbon |
Later that evening, after the customary cocktail
at the Courtyard's 'MoMo' Bar, we once again went in search of food
at the Times Square mall. Our first choice being already full, we
managed to get a table in a restaurant with the usual name of
China Plane. The language difficulties here turned out to be
among the worst experienced so far. We had the world's hottest hot
and sour soup
and a supposedly mushroom-based main course that Bruce assured me
was actually full of sea cucumber!
