Namsan Tower/Insadong

Writing a blog in retrospect is tough. After thinking that we'd finally caught up with ourselves, I realized that we've overlooked a few cool adventures. Our trip to Namsan Tower (also called Seoul Tower), our visit to the Insadong neighborhood and dinner with a Korean family.

I'll start with Namsung Tower. Namsan Tower is located on Namsan Mountain, just outside of Seoul. It's a communication tower that slightly resembles the Space Needle, if the Space Needle were constantly under construction and surrounded by traditional Korean swordfighters (I'll get to that part in a minute). One can ride a cable car up the mountain to the tower, but we chose to brave the city bus with our friends Zach and Hyunju to save on cost and to see the neighborhoods. Riding up a steep mountain in a racing bus was probably just as thrilling as the cable car!

The air at the top of the mountain felt incredibly fresh, probably due to the fact that we'd been inhaling city air for the past month. Though we could still see the city, it felt very removed. We arrived in time to catch a choreographed sword fight in the traditional manner, in which men wielded mighty swords and shields in a dance to dramatic music. I took way too many photos (check them out on our Flicker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjheartandseoul/).

My favorite part of Namsan tower is the locks. Couples visit Namsan to place locks around the tower to symbolize their love. When I was in Venice (shout-out to Gaby) and I saw the locks on the bridges I about died from cuteness overload, so finding that Seoul shared this tradition was quite exciting for me. Of course, I talked Tyler into buying a lock, which we placed on the "lock trees" surrounding the tower. Now there will always be a piece of us in Seoul!

After busing back from the

tower, we spent the evening in Insadong, a more historical area of Seoul. Where Insadong begins and ends, we can see a glimpse of Korea's past mixing with the present (one of the many ways that Korean culture is so interesting). Many of the buildings are from the Joseon Dynasty (remember Gyeongbukung Palace?), as well as loads of cafes and art galleries . Tyler and Zach hit the batting cages, where Tyler hit a zillion homers. We strolled through the market before we dipped our toes in the stream - refreshing after a long day of walking! Then we had dinner with HyunJu's parents, marking our first taste of American cuisine a la Korea...Bennigan's! Seriously, salad never tasted so good.