Day Seven

Namsan Park - Seoul Seonggwak (Fortress Wall) - Bukchon Hanok Village - Ichon - Itaewon

Not such an early start to the day, a proper lie in after such a long tiring day yesterday. Bones & muscles tired, my jaw was still aching from moaning & groaning. We grabbed some breakfast which consisted of them strange sandwiches we had in Japan. We headed for the subway for our 1st sight see of the day. We was off to Namsan Park to see the Seoul Tower. Off the train it was a fair old walk to the bus stop, on the way we grabbed some muffins. After our bus ride we got off at Namsan Library & began yet another hike to the Seoul Tower. It was a really steep climb but this time there was a proper walk way. 3/4 of the way up we realised that you could have caught a bus up but silly us once again was trekking like fools! We finally, after a struggle made it to the top. It was definitely a tourist hot spot as it was quite busy at the top. We paid to take the short lift journey to the top of Seoul Tower & it was worth the cash! The lift opened into a massive observatory & you could see the whole of Seoul! It was beautiful because you could see the famous river & the peak we climbed the day before.

Taking the bus back down to the bottom of Namsan park we grabbed the train & bus to Seoul Seonggwak (Fortress Wall) but it was closed, that didn't stop us taking a walk around though. There was lovely views of Seoul & the fortress wall but it looked like you needed to proper hike around so we were secretly glad it was closed. It was getting extremely cold nearly unbearable but we still made our way for a nose around Bukchon Hanok Village. The village was old style. They houses & shops had the traditional black slate roofs, they looked lovely! As it was getting late & dark we decided to head back nearer our hostel district so we could grab some food & get backing.

Off the subway there was a Starbucks Coffee shop - it smelt devine we just had to have one! Mouth watering, we grabbed our 1st really coffee on the trip & headed out the door only to be met with a delicious looking doughnut shop called Dunkin Doughnuts - yummy yum yum, we just had to have a doughnut to compliment the coffee. 2 bites of the doughnut & one of each others & they were gone, not chewed properly just swallowed.

Back at the hostel we got a warm, a change of clothes & refreshed our minds ready for our nighttime explorations. After packing a little we then headed for a place called Ichon. We were heading to Ichon to take a look around the massive electronic shop & hopefully pick up a camera battery but when we arrived there it was too late as the shop was closed. With it being so so cold we didn't look around we just headed for our next destination of Itaewon.

Itaewon was meant to be the place in Seoul where there are many different cultures as this placed mushroomed with shops after the Americans had been there. It was meant to be lively & have many different style shops, so we had to take a look. Arriving at Itaewon & getting off the train there was not much around to be honest. You could only notice that there was lots of different cultures by the types of restaurants. There was curry houses, steak places, kebab shops - you name it they had it! It was a place that was full of bars & night clubs but there wasn't much happening when we got there so we headed back instead.

Arriving back in our hostel district we decided as we hadn't had any food to go to a traditional Korean style restaurant for our last meal in Seoul. The food is very different to what's at home & they sure do love their spices. After some sushi, rice with beef in a hot sauce & having the traditional Korean soup which you get with every meal we went back with fully bellies to the hostel.

All the packing done, it was sleep time! We set off early tomorrow - Beijing here we come........