[FLASHBACK - Friday, February 25th in Seoul, Korea]
After taking the red-eye into Seoul (my first flight on the awesome Singapore Air - more about that later), we arrived at our hotel around 8am. Since our room wasn't ready yet, we lucked out and were upgraded to a floor that had free daily breakfasts and free happy hour every day. This trip was starting out right.
After a long nap, we took a cab down to a little shopping district called Insadong, where we wandered up and down the alleyways. I had no idea the streets of Seoul were so steep.
That evening we walked up to N' Seoul Tower (huge hills again - my calves were getting a great workout), where you can get great views of the city.
Yes, that is a winter jacket I'm wearing! Spring in Seoul is similar to Minnesota, it even snowed a little once or twice while we were there. It was so refreshing. I could even blow dry my hair without having to stop in the middle to stand in front of the air conditioner to cool down.
There were fences around the tower, and for some reason, they were all covered with padlocks with messages written on them. There were thousands of them. We never figured out why...
After finally making it up to the top of the tower, we were rewarded with quite a view:
We had our first Korean BBQ dinner at the tower, and then headed back to the hotel for a good night's sleep - we're going to the DMZ tomorrow!
Hi, Chris!
ReplyDeleteThe son of a good friend of mine spent a year in Korea teaching English, so I asked him about the padlocks. He wrote back: "he padlocks have love letters on them! She can google "Namsan Tower locks" to find an article that explains it further." Here's a link to one explanation:
http://ispyshanghai.com/2009/03/27/padlocky-lovers/
As long as I've taken the time to log in--thanks SO much for this blog. I follow about a dozen bloggers, and yours is hands-down my favorite. Just fascinating--and often very funny. It sounds like you folks are having a terrific time, and I often feel jealous after I read your posts.
BTW, did you hear about Noah's basketball team taking first in the class 3A championships Saturday night? Such excitement!
Beth Gaede