First of all, the only thing I thought I would have to do last week would be go to Itaewon, buy some pants, finish up some research and development work, and then maybe do some grocery shopping.
Thursday was my first day off and was by far the laziest day of my weekend. Itaewon was nice. I found some pants at the first shop I went to and it was all good. I was bored and didn't want to go home to clean or do actual WORK so I headed over to Namdaemun and Myung dong to kill some time. Nothing exciting there except for some random guy singing in Namdaemun. I don't know if he was famous or what. However, I think I was the youngest person in that crowd. As you watch the video, note the plethora of permed ahjuma heads in front of me.
Kendra texted and asked if I wanted to do something later that night since she had a half day of work on Thursday and I said sure, let's hang. As soon as I saw her, I knew something was up just by the look on her face. Turns out that, for reasons I won't go into on the blog, that she had quit her job. Needless to say she wasn't very happy. So we headed to the mall for chatting and a viewing of "The King's Speech" (which was freaking AWESOME in spite of Kendra's depression).
Thus began the weekend of insanity.
Kendra got plane tickets to leave on Friday April 8 which meant that she had very little time to pack up, move out, and get in as much touristy crap done as possible. Kendra wanted to hit a palace so we looked up directions which really weren't at all helpful. The directions said to get out at Namdaemun market and that was it. Nothing really helpful there. Rather than be bummed, we decided to just wing it and hope to find something on the area map at the subway station.
At the Hoehyun station where you get off for Namdaemun market, we thought we found what we were looking for.
Where we were.
Where we thought we wanted to be.
How far away it was.
Whatever. That's fine. So the map wasn't very helpful or detailed. That's okay. We can still do this. We headed out and started in the general direction of where we thought we should go. After a while of searching, we saw some historical looking photos. That looked promising so we followed the photos to a viewing area and were more than a little astonished at what we found.
Here's a photo of what we thought we would see when we arrived.
Here's what we actually saw.
Yep. Apparently there was a tragic fire at some point which reduced our tourist attraction to a pile of rubble. How nice. Well, we later found out that this wasn't even the palace we had set out to see in the first place! This was the Namedaemun East Gate.
There was still hope!
Since we were there, we decided to walk around Namdaemun to find some souvenirs for Kendra to take home. Along the way, we found something that Kendra had been looking for since our first visit to Namdaemun: heart attack on a stick.
I don't know what it is actually called, but that's what it looks like. Turned out to be a corn dog (complete with the breading) that was then covered in potato bite hash brown things. It turned out not to be as greasy as it could have, but it wasn't exactly a healthy meal. I couldn't finish mine. It was giant.
Along the way shopping for Kendra, I finally caved and bought a cell phone charm I had been coveting since I saw a girl at church with one. It's a little chain with little pictures of the beautiful Lee Hong Ki. This boy is just adorable and I love the character he plays in the drama "You're Beautiful."
Here is a picture of him up close for your enjoyment.
What a pretty boy. :)
We spotted a Tourist Info box and decided to stop and ask if they could direct us to the palace we had come for in the first place. I think we gave them the wrong name, but we ended up getting to Kyongbok palace, so I don't think it was a big waste.
Look! Kendra is alive even after the insane taxi ride!
Tada! Kyongbok palace!
I *heart* Kyongbok!
It was a beautiful place. I love the colors of the painted patterns.
Lovely!
We got to look inside some fancy building and I'm not sure what was going on but it was also very pretty.
After walking around for a while, we headed home. We were also super lazy and took a taxi all the way out. Yeah. It was a day of taxi rides. Go us!
But that's not all! While we were in Namdaemun, my friend Tara called and told us she was quitting HER job as well! Stay tuned for the extra fun times that followed this information.
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