By a stroke of luck, our Buddha’s birthday bank holiday
coincided with Mum’s business trip to Thailand and Seoul. This meant we got to
spend three full days together. We had such a great time, and fair play to Mum
who embraced all we threw at her. We had anticipated an emotional Hollywood style hello,
but our first encounter didn’t quite go as planned. We had been given
directions from the subway station to the hotel, where we had planned to meet
Mum at 10.30am. However, we got ridiculously lost (although at one point we were
within 50 meters of the hotel without realising), and ended up in a café buying
a muffin purely to use their wifi to get some directions! By this point it was
11.15am and Mum had come to try and find us. Finally, our paths crossed just
walking along the street, Mum basically tapped us on the shoulder and saying “hey”.
After some catch up time over a coffee (one of many coffee
breaks over the weekend) we headed out to show Mum some of the sights of Seoul.
We visited one of the main palaces called Changdeokgung and explored the ‘secret’ (everyone knows) garden behind the complex. It
was nice to see a defrosted version of the secret garden as when we visited
Seoul in January it was -6'C! We then wondered around the traditional Bukchon
village and the quirky shopping area of Insadong where Mum bought a few
souvenirs. For dinner we wanted to show her some real Korean food and we found
a small place in Insadong that served a variety of Korean classics. We ordered
a rice dish called Bibimbap along with some chicken and pork. By accident we
got the octopus bibimbap which came as quite a surprise! The night was ended with
a few rounds of cards, Ed learnt how to play ‘hearts’ and beat both myself and
Mum. After the day’s festivities, Ed having enjoyed the day, without thinking
commented, “Thank God it’s Buddha’s birthday!” Here are some photos of our
first day:
The second day, we
started by visiting the Gyeongbokgung palace guards. We got some good
pictures, Mum nearly put her arm around one of the guards, which was
very funny to watch. Afterwards, we wondered through a cultural
exhibition and a rather eccentric Korean man came up to us and talked at
us quickly in English. We think he was attempting to use every single
English word he knew within a 30 second time frame. To our amazement,
the next day we actually bumped into him again! He didn't remember us
and did the same English splurge all over again while we politely smiled
and nodded....again!
In
the afternoon, we walked along a stream that runs throught the centre
of Seoul. The stream has been built into a peaceful oasis designed for
locals to come and escape the bustle of Seoul. It cost $384,000,000 to
build- they must have been seriously desperate for some peace. As it was
Buddha's birthday the area was decorated with lanterns and scuptures.
We had wanted to visit a market place on our walk but unfortunately it
was closed.
In the evening, we ventured up Namsan tower for a panoramic view of Seoul. It being the holidays, the queue for the cable car was huge but we managed to pass the time with an epic game of 'quiz'. Questions included: name 6 active volcanos, name all the football teams in this year's premier league, and name all the Harry Potter books. Shamefully Mum and I could not remember the 5th book all night and had to look it up on the internet when we got home.
The final day with mama was spent exploring Gyeongbokgung palace. Luckily we arrived in time to watch the changing of the guard ceremony which involved a lot of Korean men with fake facial hair and big drums. The pond in the palace was particularly beautiful as the lotus flowers had started to blossom. We followed this with a final coffee break to say goodbye and then jumped on a train back home to Jinyeong. It was a fantastic weekend!
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