Monday, May 2, 2011

서울

I woke up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to head into Seoul for a day I assumed I would be spending on my own sightseeing, which ended up being a great day where I met some awesome new friends. I had planned on heading in to watch the Royal Procession, which is an event that is held annually to commemorate the past Royal members of Korea. On my way in, I texted a friend I had just met and who had mentioned she was going to this as well. I met up with her and a friend in Seoul and we headed to Jongmyo Shrine to check out the ceremonies.

Once into the shrine we hung around for about an hour and watched the ceremonies happening there. During the ceremonies they greet the spirits of the royal families, then entertain the spirits and then send off the spirits. It was a pretty cool experience to watch.

After we got tired of watching the same thing happen over and over(no disrespect intended) we heading out onto the street to watch the Royal Procession make its way to the shrine. There were about 500 hundred people involved in the procession. The crazy part about it was that in the other 4 lanes of traffic not affected by the procession, traffic and busy Korean life was just going on as always!


After taking in the procession, we decided to go to a near by area called Insadong, where we found a vegetarian restaurant for lunch! The food was excellent, I even had fake meat!

The best thing about going to a Korean style restaurant is you sit on the floor and there are tons of cushions so you can get comfy after you have stuffed your face! Once we were good and full we decided to head out to another are to a park called Seoul Forest. It was huge and had all kinds of things, there was a pretty awesome play ground, and cool things to climb, which we obviously did! The Koreans were laughing at all the foreigners playing on everything!





Once we had had enough of the park and walking around outside, we heading to Gangnam area to a coffee shop that also has an area in it called Dr. Fish. Basically you go to the coffee shop, eat and drink and then you can pay 2000 won to have tiny fish eat the dead skin off your feet! It was an interesting experience! I have super ticklish feet so I was laughing and screaming and could barely keep my feet in! The come at you like little piranhas, all while you are sitting on a stage so all the Koreans can again, make fun of the foreigners! 



It was a day filled with crossing things off our Korean bucket lists! I had a great time, made new friends and hopefully will have more adventures to come!