Ancient palaces

This fall, we have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather, and exploring all over Seoul. We want to take every chance we can since some of the outdoor things won't be as fun once winter comes. Since we're only here until May, we have a limited opportunity. One weekend in September, we went down to Seoul, stayed at the Dragon Hill Lodge on the huge Yongsan army post, and did more exploring! We as usual, took the subway down.

The girls love to look out the train window.

Since we had to wait for Chris to get home from work, we got there a little late (after 8PM.) It ended up being a bonus for us because we got a free upgraded room which was worth $200 more than our original room! It was huge!

This is just the entry and living area where the girls slept. There was also an area for our king sized bed, a double sink vanity, a nice bathroom, and a kitchen area. I knew Claire would love the hotel room (yea for jumping on the bed!), but I was surprised at how much Maddie just loved crawling around and around in the circle floor plan. It's like she felt liberated!

We enjoyed a relaxing evening there, and had a tasty American sit-down dinner. I also enjoyed the nice jetted tub that night. Ahhh. We also had a relaxing morning where we enjoyed way too many American pastries for breakfast and took the kids to the awesome hotel playground. They had a kiddy area that was the perfect size for Maddie to crawl around on. Unfortunately, it had rained earlier, so not only did she get filthy (I never did get the stains out of her pants) but she was soaking wet. Good thing I had an extra outfit for her. (And good thing she didn't need an extra outfit later in the day!)

If you look closely, you can see through her pants because they are soaking wet. I think she's sitting in a puddle in that tunnel.

Oh, the dirty pants, but oh, the fun she had!

Claire didn't stay still long enough for many photo opps, but she did like this dinosaur!

The Dragon Hill Lodge (which is a 5 star resort) also has a beautifully landscaped area and walking path.

After we left the Dragon Hill Lodge, we headed out to meet my friend from grad school at Mad for Garlic, where she treated us for lunch. The food was delicious! After lunch, Yoong Kyung walked with us to go to the palaces. It was a beautiful part of the city. We also saw some statues and monuments.

King Sejong - He created the written, phonetic Korean language (in 1443) as well as many other scientific inventions that were well ahead of their time. A picture of this statue is also found on Korean money.

A sample of some of the original written Korean (hangul) which has only slightly changed in the last 500 years. The girls look pretty cute too. :)

The back of a famous statue with an old warrior dude. Sorry I don't know the history on him. (He was kind of far away, so we didn't walk down to see the front.)

Chris has been practicing his photography skills and doing a great job (as you will continue to see.) Not only is this flower beautiful, but I thought it was cool to see the bee busy at work. If you enlarge the picture, you can even see the pollen specks on the bee's legs. This is was on a beautiful patch of grass on the median on the way to the palaces. My friend told me they turn it into an ice skating park in the winter. :)

That's us walking to the front gate of the palace. I love the mountains in the background. It was such a beautiful (high in low 70s), perfect day too.

There are a lot of palaces in this area. We didn't get to see this one up close, but it looked pretty cool. I love oriental architecture.

After a nice walk, we got up to the front gate of the Gyeongbokgung Palace (the largest of the ancient palaces in Seoul.) There were soldiers dressed in traditional clothing outside the front gate.

There are actually two main gates with a courtyard in between, before you get to the actual palace. Soon after we got there, they performed a ceremony in the courtyard with soldiers marching in traditional clothes and playing traditional Oriental instruments and drums. It was pretty exciting for Claire, though at first we thought it was the ceremony of the entrance of the king, but then we realized it wasn't. For the rest of the time when we were there, she kept asking where the king was, because we told her he was coming. (We also originally told her we were going to the palaces, like where princesses live. I could see her confusion. No princesses were actually there either.)

Yoong Kyung and I in the courtyard.

The second gate

Really cool drum right inside the front gate.

The detail everywhere is incredible, and so colorful.

After the ceremony, we joined a group for an English tour of the site. While standing in the back of the group with the stroller, trying to listen, we suddenly heard a ton loud oohs and ahhs and Korean gibberish headed our way. Suddenly we were surrounded by about twenty people all trying to see the girls, hold them, tickle them, and get them to smile. I've experienced things like this a lot in Korea, but on a much smaller scale. This was INSANE. Chris chronicled a few of the instances with the camera. (Yes, this happened way more than once.) I felt bad for our tour group though. They probably couldn't hear a word. We ended up letting them go on without us, and my friend told us interesting facts as we went instead. It was much more our speed anyway than a tour group.

A mass of adoring Koreans.

This was another instance, but at least this was a group of Chinese people, so I could at least understand them and communicate with them. One man ended up giving Maddie a special, somewhat expensive, wooden, beaded, engraven Buddhist bracelet just because she liked it and she was cute.

Not only did the girls get people's attention, apparently Chris did too. He had four different groups of people ask to get their picture taken with him. No, he was not in uniform. He was dressed in jeans and a button down shirt, just being Chris. It seemed really weird to me, that they would take pictures with an adult. I was impressed Chris obliged, considering he isn't a big fan of having his picture taken. 

After going through both gates, we finally got to the main palace.

Gyeongbok means "the new dynasty will be greatly blessed and prosperous" and gung means palace.

This was originally built in 1395, just three years after the founding of the Joseon Dynasty.

I was told that because there are two roofs, that means it is for a king/ queen vs. a prince or princess who would have just one roof.

Inside the palace

While the main palace was the central point of the site, there were other smaller buildings that were sleeping quarters for the king, queen, prince, princess, etc. There were also dining areas and more walls around the area.

A special place where the king would throw formal banquets for foreign envoys. This was closed off and accessible by only the king, and those of the highest rank. 

I love this cool tree.

We could have tried on real hanbok (traditional Korean dress) but got there just as they were closing. We at least were able to get some shots with these fun cut outs. :) Claire needed a little help reaching her head up to the hole, even on the shorter ones. :)

As I sat on the train home, I reflected on the day, and my heart felt so happy. It was such a perfect day. The weather was perfect. The company was perfect. The food was awesome. The relaxing way we got to wander through such a cool historical, beautiful site, was also perfect. And what better way to come home, than to get off the subway to see this beautiful sunset by our house. Ahhh, I feel so blessed.