Seoul from a Woman's Perspective

Our trip to Seoul was completely delightful and exhausting. We walked all over that city and saw as much as we possibly could have in 4 short days. There was much art to be taken in, great food to find, and palaces to wander through taking in the history and the beauty.

My favorite two events of the extended weekend happened in the evenings. The first evening after a day of touring, we stumbled across a bar that looked inviting and we decided to have a beer before retiring to our lovely guest house. With our beers, we were politely served bar snacks, which in Korea is some sort of corn nut type snack and a bowl of dried anchovies. We see these anchovies everywhere in the markets on the street, but we hadn't had the opportunity to try them until that night. We both did eat one (actually Jess ate two and I was only able to eat one after I stared it down for a few minutes looking into it's little dried eye) and that will probably be the last time I eat those.

The second night we went out to a perfect little jazz bar that was almost hidden. We had an awful time trying to find it, eventually giving up, eating some dinner, deciding to try again, then when we finally found it the band was on a 30 minute break. We stayed anyway and had a wonderful time listening to great music and feeling like we'd found a place most tourists don't find.


Which brings me to the best thing about Seoul. Jess and I successfully found every single thing we were looking for in Seoul, which was no easy task! We had a list of sites we wanted to see, including obscure restaurants and bookstores that weren't in the most accessible places, nor were their signs written in English. But every single time, we found what we were looking for (even if it took a few hours). We can't claim all the glory for this though. There were several very helpful Koreans who stepped in and assisted us. There were a few information centers we found, but mostly there were friendly people who wanted to help us when we were lost. This is what we've experienced everywhere we've gone in Korea, helpful friendly people (notice helpful man #1 to the right). This makes Korea a very happy place for us to live.