Day 3

 Today was a crazy whirlwind and I may just sleep forever!  Forgive my sleep deprived rambles for a bit.

This morning was our Holt City Tour.  We were met by our guide, Haesol Yoon at the front of the hotel.  She was an awesome young lady who attends Hankook University (very prestigious university) and she spoke perfect English!  YAY!!  And she even knew how to get on the bus, a major coup for us!!   

We went over to the Deoksu Gung Palace where we arrived just in time to see the opening ceremony.  We planned it that way...really we did!  

 I'd really hate to be the guy in charge of touching up the paint!

We were able to see the changing of the guards.  Very neat.  Think changing of the guards at Buckingham with drums and chanting.  

And this is that random, awkward moment when they announce "now go choose one and take a picture"  All the guards space out and you are supposed to run up and snap a picture with them.  Don't know exactly what to think about this. 

This odd little guy was carved all over then palace grounds.

Ok.  These things are just plain creepy looking.  I'll explain.  No these aren't tombs.  I thought they were.  I mean they have engravings, they are definitely the right shape...

They are actually more like place holders.  They are inscribed with official titles and they are like a giant seating chart for when the Emperor held court.  

 The age of these buildings was just amazing.  Makes the US look like a blink of an eye.

Water clock 

 Royal living quarters

 And the adventures on the subway continue!  At least when we get lost down there with her she can understand the signs! 

 Lunch at a really yummy traditional Korean place.  Lee was thrilled to sit.  Can't you tell?

 We were melting.  100 % humidity, 90 degrees, no A/C ANYWHERE!  Every one here was a sweaty gross mess!  But lunch fixed us up!

 Cold noodles.  Yup.  In ice-water!  Sounds completely yucky but was absolutely delicious!  Look at how huge the bowls are.  The Koreans can put away the food!  It's amazing the amount of food for one serving!  

This is the point of the tour where we deviated a little from the plan.  We had already been where she had planned to take us yesterday so she offered to take us somewhere else.  We mentioned we wanted to see a traditional market.  This is the part of the tour Lee refers to as "The old lady clothes, panties, and fish Tour"  The sheer amount of knockoffs down here was amazing.  And it was packed.  I was able to get some video in the quieter part of a street.

 It was about here things started to get odd.  We got a little turned around and ended up in a bunch of underground, back room, shops selling fish.  Yup.  Fish.

 Sorry the pictures are a little blurry here.  We weren't sure if we were supposed to be down here or not and I didn't want to make anyone angry by flashing a camera at them so I turned off the flash.

 And yes, that in the background there, is a woman brushing her teeth over the fish.  Odd folks down here.

And this is where I get super excited to see daylight! 

And, if she didn't have to walk around with us enough today, we then went up to Namsan Tower.  WOW! This is us trying to cross the street.

 Look!  Tower ahead!

 Really neat old historic house in the middle of Modern buildings.

 We took a taxi over to the tower but you have to ride a bus to get up to the actual tower.  There are no cars allowed up there.  

 And from there....we hoofed it. Up some crazy steep hills!

 The view up there was breath taking.  Literally amazing!

And we couldn't forget our lock!  The sheer amount of locks here is amazing.  Haesol was nice enough to read some of the notes.  Some were sweet and some were...colorful!  Traditionally it's a place for lovers but it recently has become a mecca for adoptive families as well.

On the way back down they had started some performance and we caught just a bit of it.

If you've been following along you may remember our desperate need for a three prong adapter for our computer.  After our nap we set out to our new favorite place.  The World Cup Stadium.  Odd name I know.  It's an old soccer stadium (obviously) that they have filled with an odd mash up of high end department store/walmart/grocery store/movie theater/restaurants.  And no, they aren't seperated out.  Only place I've ever been where you can buy a Coach purse, pet rabbit, and a computer all at once.  Super odd.  But the one thing they didn't have was a cord for our computer.

DOH.

Thank goodness Lee was pretty sure he could break off the ground plug on our cord and make it work.  Go, Go, McGiver power.  

It works!!