Royalty, Riches and Regular Folks

Royalty

Today was a big day of sight seeing for us. We started with the Changdeokgung Palace, which is smaller than the palace we saw last time, but is famed for its secret garden.

This is Teresa outside the main entrance to the palace.

The black sign with gold letters is the doorway to the king and queens bedroom. Hmmm, I think perhaps we should do some more elaborate decorating for our bedroom when we get home.

The Korean Palaces of the Joseon Dynasty have many buildings with this distinctive architecture.

I am most fascinated by the elaborate painting under the eaves of every building.

I am standing in front of a pond in the Secret Garden. The gardens, were pretty brown this time of year, but we could imagine that they would be quite spectacular in full bloom.

This gate is the entrance to the King's library. I liked how the old tree had woven its way right into the architecture.

Riches

After leaving the Palace we hustled through busy Seoul City traffic and train stations to make it to the Theater on time.

At the Nanta Theater we watched a performance of Cookin', which is one of the most popular shows in Korea right now. It is a fusion of Blue Man Group meets Top Chef. It was a very good show that blended the traditional Korean percussion styles into a modern theatrical production.

After the theater we went to a fancy restaurant at the top of the Jongo Tower called Top Cloud. The views were fantastic and the food was wonderful. It was nice to savor one of our last grown-up meals together before we are a full-time family of four.

As you can see from this photo of the Bosingak Bell Pavillion that Seoul is truly a city where the ancient is fused with the modern.

Regular Folks

Most of this trip we have made a point of trying new things that we did not do on our previous trip to Korea, but one of the places we had visit again was the Namdaemun street market. Here dark alley-ways come alive at night with an eclectic array of street vendors, impromptu restaurants and shops. You could buy anything from socks and shoes to squid and ginseng.















The restaurants set up with plastic tables and beach umbrellas on the street;the menu is on full display. It was fascinating for us to see very well dressed people sitting having dinner in these little plastic tents.

While the views from Top Cloud were nice and the menu selections in Namdaemun were "interesting", I think a good old Korean McDonald's is more my style.

Josiah - Mommy and Daddy miss you very much and we are coming home with Naomi very soon. We had some french fries for you while we were at McDonald's. Give Grandma and Grandpa hugs and kisses for us.

After such a full day on Saturday, we are going to take it pretty easy on Sunday and then Monday we get Naomi!!! Only one more day to go...