A Trip To Seoul: Part 1

This past weekend my parents and I headed into Seoul to spend the weekend there sightseeing and hanging out. Our first stop on Saturday was to Cheongdeokgung Palace. Finding the palace was easier than I expected. When we got there we had to wait about 45 minutes to actually visit the palace. They only offer guided tours in order to view the palace, so we waited for the next English tour.

This is the entrance gate to the palace called Donhwamun Gate. This was our Cheongdeokgung tour guide. Her English was pretty good, but there were still times she was hard to understand. These are called "Rank Stones" and they lined the courtyard of Injeongjeon Hall. My mom and I being your typical tourists and posing for a picture together in front of the hall. The three of us got a picture together in the 'Secret Garden'. The Juhamnu Pavilion, the pond and the leaves changing color made for a great picture.

The guided tour lasted about an hour and a half. When it was finished we headed to find the hostel we would be sleeping at for the night. I decided we should walk to find it because it was only 2-3 train stations away and didn't seem worth paying for.

This is the beautiful canal that runs through most of Seoul. We passed it along the way to the hostel.

I followed the directions perfectly, but on they were written wrong on the email confirmation, so we ended up having to ask around. It took us an extra 10-15 minutes to find the hostel and it was just by fluke when I looked down an alley and saw the sign. The hostel was really nice and better than we expected, being a hostel and all.

We ended up having bunk beds in our room at the hostel and of course, some ridiculous wallpaper.

We chilled at the hostel for a few minutes because we were exhausted from all the walking at the palace and then walking to find the damn hostel. We went looking for food in the area, but after walking for a good 20 minutes we realized there was no restaurants around or any that seemed worth eating at. We just ended up going to Family Mart and buying some snack since we were meeting up with Rudy and Danny for dinner in a few hours anyways.