Seoul-oh

The trip to Seoul was uneventful, which is just how I like my train rides. The time in Incheon was also predictable. As noted, I purchased some trousers and some books.

My book purchasing habits are abrupt. I went into What The Book and had my two books within 10 minutes. A book on Korean history and a book of essays on Korea. Just more attempt to backfill those vast holes in my knowledge. The OAF, on the other hand, approaches book-shopping like a 35 year old virgin nerd approaching a gaggle of hookers – she’s excited, apprehensive, gonna check everything out, and likely to blow her wad once she has (or spend two hours pretending she hasn't).

In fact, I’m just going to cut and paste that description of her book-shopping should the subject ever arise again. It is rare that I describe something accurately, and I’m not gonna waste those times I do.

But her endgame takes time, so I was off to the bar and some reading.

Then we headed off to the hotel. Again, the ChungJin, which is north of the Han River and convenient to a lot of things, including Insadong, the palaces, and Cheonggye Plaza, which was where the opening to the “Hi-Seoul” food festival was to take place. And it is here that my essential silliness was first exposed.

OAF and I dropped of our stuff at the yeogwan and I studied what the intarwebs had to say about getting to the plaza. Apparently we needed to go back to our tube station, head to a transfer point, and then go North to Gwanghwamun Station.

Simple really…

And it probably only took us 20 minutes. The end of which was the OAF actually figuring out which direction we should go.

Which means, really, I let the side down.

We went to the river, checked out the lights, food, this and that… and then walked down towards the other end (after a quick stop for a bracing cocktail and to watch the first innings of the epic Korea-Cuba gold-medal baseball game) of the river.

Did so and slowly walked back. As we did that, I noticed the second-coolest-building in Seoul was getting really close to us. And since it was really close to our hotel, we were walking back towards that as well.

We watched the 8th inning of the Korea-Cuba game in a square with a ton (gaggle?) of howling Koreans.

Although I wanted to stay his was not Yvonnes gig, so we started to walk back to the hotel. Which turned out to be 2.5 blocks away.

Not one transfer and two stations, rather, 2.5 blocks. We had spent two bucks and 20 minutes to circle around the place, and then get slightly farther away. The bad graphic “over there” (A phrase I’m now using to avoid “right” or “left”, since my commentariat – they put the common into “comment”- is a bit callous to my dyslexia with respect to those arbitrary directions) demonstrates what we did. From Jonggak to JognoSam to Gwanghwamun.. and then back to that green dot that was across the street all the time.

After all this was concluded, and we had left the plaza, we ducked into a franchise Japanese restaurant to watch the conclusion of the Korea/Cuba game. It was mad with drama, and the Koreans won despite the fact it looked like they were gonna lose in horrible fashion (and after a Cost Rican umpire seemed to go all Carribean on his strike zone. I mean, I'm suspicious of Korean claims of screwdom, cause Koreans sometimes make them randomly, but this guy and the women's handball decision? You be giving the Koreans fodder for paranoia!). It was a grand game.

It was silly, but I’m sure we enjoyed it. Still, probably should have looked at an actual map, and not just a subway map. ;-)

Which brings us to Sunday.. which is tomorrow…

like, you know, in the past tense and that now tense...