Day 3- City Tour

Sorry in advance for the long post but there is so much to tell

Yesterday was Friday July 2nd and our City Tour. When I got up yesterday the sky looked dark and cloudy but I had hoped it would pass. As the morning grew on it kept getting darker and by 9am it was raining really hard. (It is monsoon season here)

Our tour guides met us in our hotel lobby and they were 2 college students. I feel terrible but I don't remember their names. One of them was studying art and the other Chinese. They were both so sweet and so excited to be showing us around.

We traveled by subway to Gyeongbokgung Palace:

Gyeongbokgung, also known as Gyeongbokgung Palace or Gyeongbok Palace, is a royal palace located in northern Seoul, South Korea. First constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867, it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. The name of the palace, Gyeongbokgung, translates in English as "Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven."
Heavily destroyed by the Japanese government in the early 20th century, the palace complex is slowly being restored to its original form prior the destruction. As of 2009, roughly 40 percent of the original number of palace buildings still stand or are being reconstructed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung- if your interested follow this link for more information. We loved the tour and learned alot of this area. Our tour guides did a great job taking us thru the Palace.

There are guards all throughout the Palace and you can get your picture taken with them. I felt really bad for them cause it was raining so hard and so many wet stinky people were pushing they way to get their pictures taken with the guards.

After we had seen all of the palace we went ot the National Folk Museum. I don't have many pictures because I couldn't use my flash on my camera and I couldn't figure how to make it stay off. It was so humid out that I think that effected my camera. For more information visit: http://www.knto.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=268152

When our Museum Tour was over we took a short cab ride to Insadong Market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insadong

Since one of our tour guides was an art student she really wanted us to see this market. She took us to a store where 2 famous artist work and there the boys had stamps made with their American names in English and under that is their Korean names in Hangul. It was about $30 each so we didn't have them made for the girls but I really wish we would have. If time allows we may go back and have stamps made for the girls.

When in Insadong we had lunch. The girls took us to a place they like to eat. They asked us a few question about our experience with Korean food then ordered for us. I couldn't believe all the food they brought out. I was going to post a picture but I can't get it to upload so I'll do it later. Anyway we had so much food. They brought out all the side dished plus Japchae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japchae, Bulgogi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgogi which was served with lettuce wraps & some red sauce, spicy radish, cold soup- it had a clear liquid base with bean sprouts and was spicy, we also had boiled bulgogi, soybean soup which I loved, kimchee, korean spinach http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sigumchi-namul and korean beef soup. The boys especially like the Japchae so the waitress kept bringing back more dishes. We all ate way too much and there was still a ton of food left over. The six of us ate for less than $5.00 each, unbelieveable.

After lunch we wandered around Isadong for about 1 1/2 hours, picked up the boys stamps then came back to our hotel. We gave the girls their gifts and returned to our room. I had wanted to start shopping, I have many gifts to bring back but I couldn't find what I was looking for so we called it a day.

When we got up to our room housekeeping was here so we took off our wet shoes put on flip flops and wandered out in the pouring rain again to buy milk at the 7-11 across the street then we came back to the hotel and Bill & Julian played pool. By this time I was cold(yes I said cold even know it was incredibly hot & humid) and tired so we returned to our room and I took a shower & relaxed while Bill took the boys to the pool. When they got back we all layed down to watch TV about 5:30pm and I woke at 7 to find all 3 boys sleeping as well. We decided to skip dinner and try and rest since we were so exhausted.

At 10:30pm Bill and I heard this strange sound and we couldn't figure out what it was. Still half asleep we heard a male voice so Bill jumped up to see who it was. It was someone from the front desk with a big bag of food. We looked in the bag and decided they delivered it to the wrong room. Bill called the front desk and they said they would look into it. After about an hour Bill called the front desk again and they said a friend delivered it for us, they said there was a memo on the bag but we took the entire bag apart and there wasn't one. When we opened it there were several bags of treats for the boys, cherries, homemade dumplings, several containers of rice and 2 really bags of bulgogi. Min's sister did tell us she wanted to cook for us and was going to drop off food on Sunday night so I guess it's from her even know it was friday night. I tried to email Min to find out but I haven't heard back yet. I guess our guardian angels have followed us to Korea too.

Bill and I are completely humbled by all the love and support we have been blessed with. We can't even begin to express our thanks to everyone.

Today we had planned on going to shopping and visiting possible Itaewon gotoPage=2&cid=527717" href="http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SH/SH_EN_7_4.jsp?, Namdaemun Market http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1848378_1848364_1848106,00.html, we were also told to check out Time Square http://english.tour2korea.com/ena/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=834091 so after some research we will figure out where we are going. It is supposed to rain really hard again today so I'm not sure where we will end up.

Other thing on our list include: DMZhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone , Blue House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House,

Seoul Tower http://www.lifeinkorea.com/Travel2/124,

Coex Mallhttp://www.lifeinkorea.com/Travel2/215 Sally said this is a must they have a great underground book store & music store.

There are actually so many more things I'd love to do but we are running out of time and I don't know how much we can squeeze in the next 2 days. All our sightseeing has to be squeezed into today & tomorrow because Monday we have the Foster Mother visit and we pick up baby Tae and then we come home Tuesday.