Namsan Seoul Tower

This past week has been quite exciting. The students are getting ready for final tests, but Corey and I have managed to get some engaging lesson plans in. Corey's class has been doing world geography in English. My second year students have been writing pen-pal letters to students in Canada. Trying to make November fun is very difficult, but I'm proud of us for trying....

This weekend we went to Seoul. This time we went with a destination in mind. We followed the directions to get to Namsan Tower! We took the cable car up the mountain and saw some gorgeous views of Fall colours below us. That was very nice, but I was extra excited because there was music playing in our cable car and guess what song was on??? Carly Rae Jepsen's, Call Me Maybe! A Canadian musician was serenading us all the way over here in Seoul.

 At the top of the mountain, there are restaurants and lookout points. It's very touristy on a Saturday afternoon. Corey and I played the role of tourists too. We bought tickets to ride the elevator up to the tower's observatory. We were crammed into a dark little elevator with about a dozen other people. There was a screen on the ceiling that showed a cartoon version of the ascent. This is what the screen looked like....

 We got off the elevator at the top and looked around the 360 degree observatory. The coolest part was that there was a post office right there at the top of the tower. The views were pretty cool too. Other than that, there were a lot of tourists and the whole inner part of the observatory was lined with gift shop items to tempt small children. And what parent is going to deny their child a Namsan Tower souvenir and risk having them burst into a temper tantrum while being trapped at the top of a tower? It's brilliant marketing. There were a lot of kids walking around with new toys and satisfied smirks on their faces.

Corey and I took the elevator back down to the bottom of the tower. We walked past the cosmetic shop, card shop, coffee shop, and restaurant that blocked the exit. Once we made it into the courtyard surrounding the tower, we saw performers dressed in old-fashioned Korean military costumes. They were just starting a performance so we stayed to watch. Corey really enjoyed the play sword fighting, where the performers pretended to kill each other off with a variety of traditional spears and swords. Corey thought of a young cousin Keith playing with an imaginary light sabre and thought he might enjoy knowing that he could have pursued that as a full-time career in Korea. The performers certainly seemed to enjoy their job and they even took some time to pose for a picture with us after the show.

We walked down the mountain path. I was freezing. What else is new? Corey had to stop and take a picture of a wild rooster on the way down, but then we made it to a coffee shop to get warm. It was called A Twosome Place, which is a popular chain of coffee shops here in Korea. We've seen them around Incheon, but this is the first time we visited one. We got some hot chocolate and plotted the rest of our day. We decided just to walk around and see whatever we came across.

We walked around Myeong-dong station and saw some amazing lights all over the huge department stores and smaller shops that lined the streets. Every brand name was available in the stores, as well as every knock-off was available from carts and trucks set up outside the huge stores. 

I must add a section on street food here. Near Myeong-Dong we bought a swirly-potato-fry-on-a-stick. It was delicious! Cooked to a perfect golden colour and rolled in salty cheese powder (that Corey adds, "tastes like Kraft dinner powder!"), this confection should not be missed. 

Also, we tasted some local street food. Very local, since the truck has started parking right outside our apartment. These are fish-shaped pastries, but they're not filled with fish. They're actually filled with a sweet red bean paste.