Day Five – Chuseok, Seoul.
While I don’t exactly appreciate Seoul as a city, due to it being far too large for my tastes, I do think its a 
definite must-see if someone is traveling around Korea. So in light of my sentiments, I planned for two days in the capital of Korea. On our first day in Seoul we explored the downtown area of the city. The first stop was an extremely large palace. The palace was rather amazing, but, being so large, by the end it gave us more of a “been there, done that” feeling. There were two rather nice ponds located on the palace grounds and the art of the buildings gave Jesse and Amy a feel for Korea’s artistic architecture. We spent a good two hours there then headed for an art gallery. Being already tired from the week, the art gallery really tugged on my energy reserves, and I slowly sloshed 
through it. There was one art piece of note: It was a set of video cameras surrounded by garbage. It had television screens on the inside, showing what the cameras were recording. In the end, it recorded tons of people performing their own take on the pieces of junk, such as pretending to balance from afar on top of a screw, etc. Very nice touch I’d say. After the museum we ate some grub and then went to Namsan Tower, better known as the Seoul Tower. Once we arrived, we were horrified to 
see the line for the cable cars. The line literally stretched from three flights of stairs to around the bend. While each of us were feeling a little burnt out from the day, we still decided to hit the tower, this time by hiking up to the top. At the top, we could see the entire city of Seoul. Now I have hit the tower four times now, once with the intent to photographically gloat with a stuffed dog, but every time the view is breathtaking. This trips view involved a majestic sunset off into the distance. Very cool. We spent a good two hours here and then went back down for some drinks near Hongik University. The drinks were a good deal and got us decently drunk. Afterwards we headed back to our motel.
Day Six – End of Chuseok, Seoul. Being our last day in Seoul, and it being the end of Chuseok, we 
decided to hit up some shopping districts since they were open now. Our first mission was to get Amy some sandals, as her shoes were having an all-out war with her. I figured Itaewon would be the best place for this, as she has some abnormally large feet for a girl. Itaewon caters to mostly foreigners because it has an American army base nearby. After finding a smashing pair of pink sandals, Jesse and Amy went to eat at a Thai restaurant. I on the other hand, went to a Taco Bell. Now I for one cannot allow the mere dismissal of a taco bell in Korea. It is fucking amazing. I think I may have even shed a tear as I bit into one of their crunch wraps. I can’t put to words how much I miss good ol’ trashy foods. After Taco Bell and Amy’s sandal
purchase, we went to the War Memorial nearby. This was probably my favorite part of our trip around Seoul, as it wasn’t a repeat of previous experiences of mine. It was new and pretty neat actually. They were several decommissioned tanks and airplanes along the grounds. There was a war museum and quite a large amount of neat sculptures surrounding it. There was the famous “Brothers” memorial depicting two brothers separated during the Korean war, who supposedly met on the battlefield (the story sounds a bit romanticized). The War Memorial was definitely an ideal repeat experience and something I’d suggest to visitors. Next up, we hit Insa-dong and blasted Jesse and Amy 
with the massive amount of tourists located there. Insa-dong is the traditional market street and features some pretty cool, and sometimes pretty generic, pieces of Korean art. We left Insa-dong fast, but not before meeting up with my brother and snacking on some kebab wraps. Afterwards we went back towards Masan. While the drive was rather long (five hours) it was pretty interesting to see the massively backed up roads leading towards Seoul. We had driven three hours away from Seoul (with very limited traffic) and the line to get into Seoul was still at a standstill. Thank god we avoided that! Word of advice, during Chuseok: do not go outside of Seoul if you live there. Going back would be a bitch.
Day Seven – Mark works. I worked again, so I spent the day teaching while Jesse and Amy explored Changwon. I briefly drove them around pointing out sites of interest before work , then headed in to teach the kiddies. Afterwards we got some drinks around the area at a fried chicken restaurant.
Day Eight – Burnt out and off to Gyeongju. I titled this day as “burnt out,” as a way to emphasis our 
feelings about traveling. We were all literally dead. We hit Gyeongju and saw some pretty cool sights, but the whole time did not appreciate it as much as we could’ve. We explored the famous temple of Tongdosa, in which I had previously underwent a temple stay. We also went to the Bulguksa temple in Gyeongju. Both temples were pretty cool, but the latter of the two I sat outside with Dajung (the dog). We then went up the mountain a bit and saw a Buddha statue built into the mountainside (Seokguram Grotto). This is a place where several people make pilgrimages to, and we could barely stand a minute of it before we went back to Masan to crash.
Day Nine – Jesse and Amy head to the airport, and Mark sleeps for twelve hours. Enough said really.
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