Soul to Seoul

Last weekend I had the privilege of visiting Seoul.

I honestly didn't think it would be that vast of a difference from Daegu to Seoul. However, I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

I traveled with my new friend Katie, a Floridian and fellow artist/weird person, by KTX to Seoul Station. From there, I had to get a transportation card to get around on the subway. I'm pretty sure that I got screwed over on that deal by a "helpful" young man by the T-money card machine. Oh well. When someone comes up to you pointing at a store and talking to you in rapid Korean, you tend to follow. Or, at least I do.

From there we attempted to navigate the underbelly of Seoul. Fortunately, we didn't get lost. We made it all the way to Hongdae, which is basically the place all the foreigners go. Our hostel was fairly nice, and the manager was very friendly, though Katie had a rough time understanding him. We ventured out the first night and found two other foreigner friends. We decided to get cocktails in a bag (which is basically the most genius idea ever) and then we went over to Suzie Q's.

I have to tell you, that is the most amazing bar I have found in Korea yet. The DJ was playing old vinyls from the best era of music ever: classic rock. One whole wall was covered in his record collection, and he took requests. So, of course, I had to request some Journey. If there is nothing else in this world that is good and true, there will be Journey.

After a long night, we got some sleep and woke up early to head over to the Trickeye Museum, which was too much fun. All the trop l'oeil paintings you can imagine. Then we went over to the Seoul Art museum, which was housing the Tim Burton exhibition. That was amazing. True, we did have to wait two hours to get into the building in the rain, but it was totally worth it. I saw one of the hands from Edward Scissorhands, and the Catwoman costume from Batman. I saw all his sketches and parts of private collections from around the world. It was really exciting.

After that, we decided to unwind at Lotte World, which was kind of lame due to rain, and the fact that Katie doesn't like rollercoasters. However, ice cream and K-pop before taking a spin on the teacups made up for that.

The next day we went tourist to see the palaces and traditional villages, as well as some shopping.

All in all, a pretty good weekend. Exhausting, but good.