Seoul with My Cousin

My first trip to Seoul was a WILD one to say the least. The bus from Gunsan to Seoul only takes about three and half hours. I met up with my cousin, April, one of my Mom's sister's kids. It had been close to 20 years since I last saw her and it was an interesting weekend filled with catching up, meeting other foreigners, and lots of drinking. We ate at a few different western restraunts, including both Outback and Subway. It was nice having a filet, or a real steak, you can't really find that where I live in Gunsan. I found that Seoul really caters to the foreigners with lots of western restrauants and lots of things in English. Probably because there are thousands of foreigners living in that area. Everywhere I looked, I saw foreigners, where in Gunsan, we are more of a novelty. You see someone in Gunsan that is not Korean and you want to start a conversation with them, to find out if they teach or work on base, and how long they have been in the area, and share information. In Seoul, it is quite the opposite, since there are soo many, the bars and streets were like back home as far as the diversity of people in them. I got to experience the subway system too, got lost a few times and took the wrong subway train, got off at the wrong stops, but I had a great time in Seoul. When I left Gunsan, we had a foot of snow and blizzard like conditions, as you saw in my last post. When I arrived in Seoul, there was no snow and it was 20 degrees colder with a bone chilling wind. One of the things to do besides go to the night clubs or bars in Seoul is to shop, especially hitting all those outside shops on the streets of Seoul, where you can get some really good bargains. But it was just too cold for both April and me to shop outside. We literally were frozen from walking just a few blocks. We ended up at the I-Park mall, which had endless levels of shopping, but more expensive prices. April at least found the boots that she wanted. All in all it was an intersting first Seoul experience and I will travel there again, in fact, we are planning on ringing in the new year out there.

I will post some pictures later.