Day One
Left Osan at about 11:00. Our first destination--the Flower Market! The intent was for Lorri to find a vase and for me to save the location in the GPS. Well, Lorri found her vase and I forgot to save the location, so we started strong! We left the Flower Market (which is HUGE and awesome, by the way) and headed for the COEX Mall. The COEX is a HUGE underground mall. It also has an aquarium and lots of restaurants. We had lunch at Jackie's, which is a Chinese-type place that pulls on the Jackie Chan motif--lots of pictures of Jackie Chan. Lunch was...interesting. If you intend to order a seafood soup in Korea you have to be ready to eat this:
After lunch we headed to the aquarium. Not a bad set-up, and lots of crazy fish and sharks and even a two-headed turtle.
Once we wore out our welcome at the aquarium we headed to the Dragon Hill Lodge. I was fully expecting to be in a regular room (one queen bed and a hide-a-bed. Not this time! We finally scored a family suite--two queens in one room and a sofa bed in the other room--for the same price as a normal room. Not that it made any difference, as everyone ended up in one room on the first night.
Day Two:
Breakfast at the Dragon Hill Lodge, then we were off on our grand adventure. We walked from the DHL to the nearest Subway station and began our journey to the Seoul Grand Children's Park and Zoo.
The Grand Park is this huge park with playgrounds and an amusement park and a zoo and tons of other stuff. If you happen to be an American (or non-Korean) and you go on National Field Trip Friday, you get to become one of the exhibits. I'll be the first to admit that I now officially know how the monkeys in the cages feel day in and day out.
(Deserving of a caption--Lorri started counting the number of times Owen tripped ad fell this weekend. I counted the number of times Anna Grace started crying for no apparent reason. This was number five of seventeen.)
Just a FEW of the Korean kids who swarmed us at the last park. I lasted 10 minutes before I picked everyone up and fled the scene.
This bench was my favorite part of Day Two. We came back from the zoo and went swimming at the DHL. After we dried up we took a cab to Itaewon, a district close to base (Yongsan's Songtan, essentially). We wanted to eat at a particular Italian restaurant but arrived 45 minutes early. This bench was literally right outside the restaurant. I sat there the entire 45 minutes while Lorri wandered around with various children attending to her.
Day Three:
Took the subway to an artsy district in Seoul called Insadong. Very cool area, but Lorri was not digging on the chow options (all Korean). We wandered around the area, checking out many of the shops and such, before we made our way to a Subway for lunch before getting on the subway to head back.
Best decorated bathroom around.
To get to the bathroom, you have to go down the stairs. Best approach to a bathroom.
Lorri's favorite part of the day--the pug sighting!
