Annyeonghaseyo, Gamsahabnida, and Mekju in downtown Seoul, South Korea
In the fall of 2013, Michele and I traveled to South Korea to visit my best friend from High School who is in the Air Force and at the time was stationed just south of Seoul in South Korea. We spent our first week exploring Seoul. We explored the tourist attractions such as the palaces, North Seoul Tower and markets, but mainly we wandered around the alleys. Seoul itself is a bustling city which is a cross between old school Asian cities with food stalls and markets and more modern Asian cites with skyscrapers and business districts. One second you would be surrounded by skyscrapers, then turn a corner and you were in a food stall alley where business men were eating Korean BBQ outside.
We did not understand much of the language, or many of the signs but we were able to find our way around and order by pointing at plastic food. Also thanks to the colorful and detailed menus we were able to avoid octopus, eel and other Korean favorites that we were not brave enough to try. We ate lots of Korean BBQ, Kimchi and sampled Mekju which is Korean for beer. By the end of the week we had the important key words down. Hello, thank you, and Korean for beer or Annyeonghaseyo, Gamsahabnida, and Mekju. The next couple days we hung out in the military district a bit and journeyed to the DMZ. We finished up our trip in another section of Seoul. More on the rest of the trip in posts to come.