I really liked Seoul. Our friends said it reminded them of Montreal; we thought it was similar to Tokyo. It had great energy, and its people seemed friendly and sophisticated. But what struck me the most was the insane amount of coffee shops in the city. Every other storefront was a coffee joint, and not just Coffee Bean or Starbucks, but Korean chains like Holly's, Angel-in-Us, and Tom n Tom's (and several others with random names). Apparently I'm not alone in my observation.
The majority of our first day in Seoul was spent at Changdeokgung Palace where we frolicked in the bitter cold (it was freezing, literally) -- photos here (along with a few taken in Dalian) -- and then ventured over to Insadong, a maze of small, pedestrian streets filled with shops and restaurants. We explored different neighborhoods, had beers in each, and went back to Gangnam (yes, Gangnam; cue Psy), known for its after-work drinks/dinner hangouts.
The next few days were spent in the mountains. We had taken a $15 bus from Seoul to Yongpyong -- this all took a good amount of research, by the way, but we figured it out (and by we, I mean Mike). Remember, none of us speaks or reads Korean (and it's nothing like Chinese, in case you thought it might be). Yongpyong was the bigger mountain, but we stayed in Alpensia, at the Intercontinental, one of only two hotels we could find and book online. It was cold and the snow was pretty hard-packed, but overall the conditions were good and it was great fun to be in the mountains.
We packed our last day in with more sight-seeing (the museum; see below) and shopping (though we didn't buy anything) and eating (which I think I covered in my last post) -- oh, and drinking (Soju is my new favorite beverage).
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