Gyeong Bok Gung Palace

This weekend, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Seoul. When I say spur of the moment, I mean I decided on Friday night and then planned the trip on Saturday before I left. Doesn't get a lot more spur of the moment than that. My hasty plans for the day were to see a large palace called Gyeong Bok Gung Palace, and then go to Itaewon, which is essentially "Little America," and do some random shopping/American food eating.

The bus ride was interesting, I sat next to a Korean man who was a teacher. He informed me that there were some important differences between American kids and Korean kids. For one thing, in Korean schools they are never taught to raise their hands, but basically to just shout their questions, etc. And I thought all of my students were just loud jerks. Hmmm.

This was also my first time navigating the Seoul subways without being shepherded around. It was pretty tricky at first actually. I basically asked a lot of people where I needed to go at first. Later I figured out how to do it, and it's just a matter of finding your stop on the map, figuring out what train line it is, somehow figuring out which direction to go, and then remembering the number of your destination. Actually, I think its a little better organized than the NYC subway system because there are just 9 or so different lines on that many tracks. In NYC it's too many different train lines traveling on a few tracks and its all a mess of numbers and letters and express trains. At least it's in English there.

So I arrived at the Gyeong Bok Gung Palace with almost no trouble, and I paid for my ticket with a 100,00 Won bank note. To my surprise and delight, they handed me back a 50,000 Won bill. These bills are new, and this is my first time I have ever possessed one. If these bills were in circulation more it would be a huge relief on wallet size because the next highest bill is 10,000 Won which is basically $10. That means if you want to carry around about $100 it takes at least ten bills.

The original founding of Gyeong Bok Gung Palace actually happened back in 1395. Korea has had a tough time, though, in preserving it's landmarks and monuments. In 1592 this place was destroyed by fire during an invasion by Japan. It took them then until 1868 to reconstruct.

The entrance to the palace complex

The palace complex is pretty much a giant walled in fortress with these different giant pagoda buildings which were once used to different purposes during times when the king was in power.

A long walkway

One of the things I like most about the palace is the fact that the palace is surrounded by mountains on one side and skyscrapers and cityscape on the other. This makes for strange sets of pictures juxtaposing palace buildings and mountains, as well as palace buildings and skyscrapers, as seen below:

Geongjeongjoen (the thrown room) and a mountain

Geongjeongjeon and the city

I went on a day where there was some kind of celebration for the elders, and there was some kind of traditional dancing and music show going on. I didn't watch for long because it was pretty boring.

The performance

A pavilion with a surrounding body of water

I think this building is part of the Korea Folk museum

So the palace was nice, but it was ridiculously hot and sunny the whole time so I couldn't tolerate much more than an hour and a half of walking around it.

My next stop was Itaweon, aka Americatown. I did a few much needed things: I ate a large, delicious hamburger, and bought a pair of cargo shorts from a store under the McDonald's called "The Brooklyn Connection." Another important thing I did was went to a book store with foreign books. I was like 'Oh I'm just swimming in English books.' You can tell that I don't see them often in Seosan. I bought a book called "Outliers." After that I was pretty pooped so I just hit the subway to the bus station and got out of there. It was definitely a good day, though.