First Trip to Seoul

Yesterday was my first trip into Seoul. Marc has already been there twice for work and even Toby went there once with Marc for a basketball game. I've really been looking forward to making the trip  and getting out of podunk Pyeongtaek. If not for the traffic it would have taken just about an hour to get there. Not too bad to get to Korea's biggest city! It was great to be there because it felt more familiar to me - like a Western/European city with a really huge Little Korea neighborhood. It was modern with a mix of old-timeyness. We only saw a very small section of the city (Dongdaemun) on this trip because it was too cold to do much walking outside. I'm sure we'll go back dozens of times to see the rest of it. For now, I'll let the picture captions do the rest of the talking.

Seoul Toll

Entering the city

Han River

One of hundreds of street food vendors.

One of hundreds of English-named stores that doesn't quite work ;)

Rice porridge

All the sides automatically come with lunch (sauteed spinach, kimchi, tiny dried fish, bean sprouts, mushrooms)

Our lunch place. The metal things are chimneys that pull down to suck up smoke from the BBQ grills at each table.

Not sure what this is, but some historic site preserved in the city.

Holograms!

Toys, toys, toys.

They like their food-shaped pillows.

The toy part of the Dongdaemun Market.

An old man warm in his workshop with the TV blaring.

Even the stuffed dogs wear muzzles. Honestly?!

Street vendors have lunches delivered to them on these reusable trays. Ladies carry them on their heads!

When we couldn't take the cold any longer we went to a huge mall and found this cool Swedish coffee shop. I'm not going to say that I pretended for 20 minutes that we were actually IN Sweden. Nope, I would never even think that.

Hot chocolate for the man-child.

Very cute and very expensive kid clothes.

Ok, seriously? I had to. This floor of the mall is for young Venture Designers to sell their clothes, which were all really cool and expensive. But they named it Dooche. No one told them this probably isn't the best name??

Kid accessories galore.

Trying on an adorable hat.

Like every mall, another fun play area for kids, with or without parents. They had a blast!

Leaving Seoul

Guy selling bread in the middle of the freeway.

A rest stop on the way home.

No trashy rest stops here! Its all cafeteria style.

The chefs

Spicy ramen noodle soup

Using a metal cup from the sterilized cabinet for water

This couple really thought the boys were cute.

Somebody likes the attention!

Hopefully the weather will warm up soon so we can see more of Seoul!