Life of a Foreign Hachikin: Korea Day Three, Photo Diary

Day three was a shrine day! We saw two shrines: Bongeunsa Temple and Jongmyo Royal Shrine. The Bongeusna Temple was free of charge, and really unspeakably gorgeous and serene, considering it was in the middle of huge skyscrapers and near the noisy COEX building. I was surprised how pretty all the wooden buildings looked juxtaposed with the metallic, shiney, business looking buildings in the background.

The Jongmyo Royal Shrine was quiet, but for the reason that they would only let you in if you took a guided tour. We had missed the English tour by thirty minutes, and didn't want to wait another ninety so we took the Japanese guided tour. Yay for bi-lingualism!! Haha~ It was actually a really interesting tour; the shrine houses the ashes of all the dead Korean kings and has a bunch of buildings dedicated to religious ceremonies. The coolest thing I learned from the tour was about the raised stone paths. The paths have a raised area going down the center so they look like they are split into three parts. You're not supposed to step on the middle path because that's the path for the spirits of the dead to walk to the shrine on.

After shrines, we walked around the COEX building and then headed back over to Myeongdong to see the Seoul Tower in the evening light. The cable car up the mountain had a gorgeous view of the city, and the tower itself is really pretty lit up in red. On the observation deck, you could see the entire city in all it's night time glory. Comparable to the view from Tokyo tower: lights going on for miles and miles in all directions. The other cool thing about the tower is that they have this "Love Letter from the Highest Post Office" project going on, where you can buy a cute postcard and send it from the top of the tower. Me and my travel buddy sent a few :)

After that, we went out to yakiniku again but at a much nicer place this time. The beef we chose was to die for, and we also got a lot of fun side dishes along with the meal (like this spicy soup and fluffy dashi egg dish) and some makkori! I guess traditionally makkori is sipped from a bowl instead of cup or glass, so it was a bit awkward holding liquid in that way, but really fun. A good way to spend the last night in Korea! Now, onto the photo diary~