Day 1 in Korea

Overall, we had an uneventful flight here. Personally, that is the way I preferred it! I watched two movies and an episode of Friends. We were served Bibimbap (we only ate the rice), seaweed soup (um...no thank you), and fruit for dinner. For breakfast, we had omlettes, sausage, and tater tots. It was pretty good. Apparently, while I was napping, they were served rolls. I smelled them, but dozed off before they came around with them. John was smart and ate the edges of the roll, but my parents took a big bite out of the middle.....no clue what they ate!
We arrived in Seoul at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday the 12th. We had no trouble getting a cab since the nice guy from the airport found us and helped us get a taxi. He also helped us exhange our money. The two men negotiated a price of $80.00 to get us to our hotel. We drove for about an hour arriving at our hotel. The price we gave was to be given in american money so the taxt driver could get a better exhange rate. So, we get to our hotel and the driver says, "150 dollar" my dad said, "no, 80." well, it ended up, we had an angry cab driver who ended up with $100.00 and an unhappy dad. Oh well, that is part of it, right?
We came into the hotel for them to tell us our room would be ready at 3 p.m, but that we could wait in the reading room. We ventured up there and relaxed and then ate breakfast. I checked my email and a blog friend, Tracy, had emailed me. We knew we would be here at the same time, so we wanted to meet up. We went over to her hotel and chatted a while and then decided to go to Seoul Tower. We didn't have anywhere to sleep (though Tracy kindly offered :)), so we decided to venture out and make the most of our day! (Keep in mind no shower since Thursday, tired, and traveled 17 hours (flight time).


Seoul Tower from the bottom



A picture of the view from the top of Seoul Tower

Seoul Tower is where they have locks that people have put on to say "this is forever locking our love."
The "kids" rode in one taxi and our parents in another. Their taxi passed ours and went on up the mountain. Ours let us out so we took the tram and headed up. We were walking around and found our parents a few minutes later. Apparently, they were put out at the bottom of a large hill. Pretty sure my mom almost had a heart attack!!! She was extremely winded from the hill and the bitter cold.
Well, we were all there now and ready to put on our lock. We decided we would get message hearts and write on them and attach them to the same lock. How cool is that?!?!


writing our message to Olivia



Both of our messages and our lock



Tracy and I before putting on the lock.



Here we are attaching them.


The lock is attached!


All four of us at Seoul Tower

Funny first shopping story: My mom wanted to buy something at Seoul tower. She noticed the sign said $2.00 so she bought 2 of them. The man rang it up and said, "$6.00" Mom said, "no, it should be $4.00" The man came around and took the basket of stuff that she bought and switched it with another basket of stuff and said, "$6.00" ----Ha!!! They must just see us coming!

We headed out of Seoul Tower and decided we would just grab a cab down. Well, apparently we went down the wrong way and ended up walking down at least 2 miles down the mountain! It was frigid, but somewhat funny!!!


We were hungry, so we all headed over to Seoul Station to eat at Bennigan's. Tracy and her mom had been there twice already, but were ok with it again! We ate and then decided we had done all we could for the day. We said goodbye to Tracy and her mom and headed back to our hotel. On the way to pick up our bags at their hotel, we passed a stand of cooked tentacles.....we think they were octopus???? Oh my! Just what you would love to snack on from an outside vendor on a cold day???? Mmmmmm!



Well, we are up and about to venture out for day 2. We had breakfast and then I wanted to blog so I had to plug it in since it was dead from yesterday.
We brought converters, we wanted to try something of less value first. So, we tried my flat iron. It is fried! I guess I will see how much one is to buy here? Oh well, at least that is all it was! Just another traveling funny story to share. :)

Side note for Rose: Yes, John really is allergic to feather pillows. You are right. Apparently in the night, his throat swelled up and he said he just went to the bathroom and prayed! He said he was thinking, "great, I don't do docs at home and now I am going to be in the ER here in Korea....I will just pray!" The reaction decreased once he got away from the pillow, and he was able to breath again. I have no clue why he didn't wake me up, but he said he could feel something click in his throat because it was so swollen.
All is well now, and we are headed out! Check back tomorrow for today's adventures! :)
Guess what???
We meet Olivia in less than 24 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!