This morning, we landed in Seoul with a 12-hour layover; rather than linger in the airport, we headed out to downtown Seoul. We started out at Gyeongbokgung palace, which turns out to be closed on Tuesdays.
Instead we went to the National Palace Museum where we saw a variety of things including the biggest hair pins you've ever seen and a giant water clock.
Next we moved on to Jogysea temple, which is an active Buddhist temple. Did I mention that there is a major Buddhist ceremony tomorrow? Alas, we were unable to go inside; it and the tent outside were full. We did get a guide to talk about Buddism in hard to understand English for a while, and some pretty pictures of the outside. The chanting was beautiful though.
Following all this we wandered around in the cold looking for the shopping district of Insadong and lunch. Eventually we found a restaurant full of locals and dropped in for lunch. The hostess apologized for not having a menu in English and suggested that we get the soup and rice, so we did. We did in fact get soup and rice, but we got an assortment of ancillary bowls of spices, onions, and other stuff including micro-shrimp. Once we figured out the necessity to mix the ingredients ( from watching others) it was pretty good.
After lunch we found what was probably the shopping district we had been looking for, but of course it's a bit early in the trip to be buying souvenirs. And it was kind of cold for window shopping. Next we dropped by Changdeokgung Palace, which seemed almost more a barracks than a palace, but we got to peak in at many wax people wearing period Korean silks and rooms with traditional furnishings. There also seemed to be a school group of little girls in one of the rooms closed off to the public. Don't know what they were doing, but it sounded fun. At that point, having exhausted the tourist options in this part of town, and being quite cold, we dropped into a European themed coffee shop with free wireless, hot chocolate, and pastries.
Back at the airport we explored the beautiful IIAC Stargarden.
We were also impressed by the fancy modern subway system. They had glass walls and doors to keep people away from trains.
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