Seoul was clean, safe, lively, busy, efficient, and full of real people everywhere doing real people things. Real people things include: talking on trains, laughing and crying in public, old people crashing through crowds and hitting foreigners with canes (just because they can), couples holding hands, people wearing all sorts of different fashions, girls wearing cute shoes that still allow them to walk, and generally not acting like robots. It was like everything that pisses me off about Japan was removed, and what was left was translated into Korean. Funny, that.
 My sightseeing buddies (and bear) for the afternoon. Being a single girl strolling around, I was approached primarily by random men and junior high schoolers. These girls were obsessed with Project Runway and America's Top Model, and they were all so friendly. Two thumbs up for nearly every person I met while in Korea! None of the men that approached me seemed sketchy, and some walked me 3 or 4 blocks when I was lost, just because they were kind.
 This palace was very famous for a reason I don't recall, since everything started melding into one memory blob. Many of them look like smaller versions of places in China. Also, it gets confusing when every building of significance can be described as such: "... and then it was destroyed by the Japanese." Rah rah Nippon... |
