Travel Journal: Seoul!

Seoul is your typical metropolitan city with tall buildings and long highways but every part of the city is so different in it’s own way, you won’t run out of things to see or do. The public transport system is really excellent and the best way to get around. You should probably not attempt it by yourself for the first time though. There are NINE subway lines running through this massive city and as far as I could tell, everything runs perfectly on time but it can get pretty confusing.There are a couple of old palaces in the city. We managed to visit only one of them because they are huge and you really can’t do more than one in a day. The palace that we visited – Changdeokgung had an incredibly fairy-tale-like secret garden in the back of it too! SungHwi and I were so tired by the time that we got to it that we had to leave half way through the tour but we did get the essence and it was pretty surreal to think that this gorgeous green little ‘forest’ exists in the midst of such a busy city!One of my favourite things that we did in Seoul was watch the Nanta show. It’s pretty well known and every bit of hype around it is well-grounded. I honestly did not want that hour-and-a-half to end!I also stayed one night in a traditional Korean house known as a ‘Hanok’. The idea was that it would be nice for me to experience that and perhaps meet other travellers but apparently I was the only guest staying that night! But I did have some interesting conversations with the guesthouse manager, whose name I forget unfortunately. He spoke perfect English which was nice because otherwise it’s quite a challenge to converse with strangers unless you speak Korean!