Day 60: Seoul

Mood: Happy
Music: Royksopp - 3 albums, Sub Focus - Sub Focus

I had today free to explore the city of Seoul and started off a little nervous of what I might find. Thankfully the city metro system is fairly easy to navigate. The lines do tend to run paralell in many places though, so you have to change more than you might do on the tube.

My hotel is situated in what appears to be in the main financial district and also the home of the national assembly buildings. It is merely a short walk to the nearest metro station and it was from here I started out this morning. The weather here is rather cold and dry at the moment. It was hovering just above zero and as such I had my coat done up as far up my face as I could manage! The

I set off this morning in search of palaces and wasn't dissapointed. There are a number in central Seoul and I visited Gyeongbok. It is sat proudly at the end of the main street in the centre of the old part of the city, to the north of my hotel.

The buildings were rather grand in the main area and the landscaping was very impressive. The pagodas and building on landscaped ponds are particularly nice. The steams flowing into the ponds are deliberately slowed down by placing sharp bends and pools before they reach the pond to allow it to have a perfectly flat surface on still days. This gives fantastic reflections in the water of the building all around.

At the entrance to the palace they happened to be percforming the changing of the guard ceremony as I approached. This lasted for several minutes and involved a number of brightly coloured guards marchin with flags past lines of tourists (myself included) with cameras whirring.

After this I visited the museums of King Sejong and Admiral Yi, both who have large statues on the main square. From there I had decided to go and visit the largest mall in the city. This is mostly because it appears on all of the tourist suggestions and included an aquarium at one end.

The aquarium was fantastic. I'd rate it much more highly than the one I visited in Sydney and it also cost a lot less to get into than that did.

As well as all of the normal exhibits of local and regional fish, they had several areas designed for children, placing fish tanks in every day objects. They also had a tank of the fish that nibble dead skin from you, as in the ones you pay to dunk your feet into a tank of, with hand holes. The fish suck gently at you in repeated short blasts and it feels very, very strange.

My main annoyance during my visit was that I ran out of battery on all of my cameras before I got to the shark tanks. These housed many of the sharks I'd seen in sydney and also a larger sand tiger shark. In a second tank they had a number of small hammerhead sharks and a shoal of sardines. The sardines swam in a massive ball, reflecting the light with pure silver on each side. The ball then changed shape as the small sharks swam around them, it was fascinating to watch.

On leaving the aquarium I made my way through rush hour metro traffic back to my hotel. I stopped at the bar opposite (as I noticed a Guiness sign through the window) for my St Patrick's day pint (that plus a couple of others...).

Now I must leave you as it's rather late / early here. I've been lying in bed planing oTTD on my laptop, listening to the coverage of the cricket on TMS.

Night for now :)