I'm a Seoul man

We only saw a tiny bit of Seoul on the last trip because of rain but were intrigued by what we did see...so two weeks later, there was a clear forecast and we were back in S-town.

Our first day there was Fourth of July so we headed to the most American restaurant we could find - KFC. I think the Colonel would be proud!


The entrance of Deoksugung Palace. You can see the guards standing out front with their blue and red uniforms. They're incredibly good at standing still...I was convinced one of them was made of wax until he looked straight at me.



King Sejong the Great. The bird on his hand is actually real...just taking a break, I guess.




King Sejong inspired me to do some deep thought thinking...



Brian is a beast, as is this cat statue in the palace complex.

The main stone avenue leading up to the throne room.

The throne!

Some cool architecture

A picture of the last royal family, I believe, taken in the early 20th century.

This building was designed and built by an English architect for the Korean king in the early 20th century. It looked really out of place in the palace, as you can imagine. It was huuuuge.

English-inspired gardens / fountain in front of the English-inspired building. It had just started to rain...notice the family attempting to evade the rain.

This wing of the palace is now an art museum. A good view of the fountain (the water is coming out of seals' mouths).

Playing around on the gigantic porch

We wondered forever what these chimney-like thingys were...and then realized they were chimneys. They aren't actually adjacent to any buildings but are apparently connected underground somehow. They wanted to ventilate the smoke away from the buildings so that it wouldn't damage the special paint reserved for palace buildings only.

Of course we had to return to On The Border for some more fajitas & chimichangas...delicious. I also met a guy there who once lived in VA Beach and had been to Luray Caverns! It's a very small world.

Later that night we went to Yeouido Park (a very popular park in Seoul) and rented a tandem bike for an hour. Man, that thing was fun! We even managed to get some sweet air off the speed bumps in the bike path :)

These domestic-looking rabbits were running wild throughout the park....I'm still not quite sure why they were there!

Another King Sejong statue & the moon...a pretty cool pic, if I do say so myself :)

And that ends Seoul Trip #2, Day 1. More to follow!