Seoul's Namdaemun Market

We wanted to go to a really good Korean Market and were told the Namdaemun Market is one of the best in Seoul.  When we got to the market Little Monster had finally fallen asleep in the stroller. After about 10 minutes of walking down the market, Kevin was stopped by a little Korean women who wanted to see the Monster.  She gets down and pets his hair and is cooing at him and talking to him.  This little lady is joined by another and another until there were 8 women all surrounding the sleeping Monster and going absolutely crazy over his blonde hair.  It was about this time, with 16 hands all up in his face, that Little Monster woke up.  He was not very happy about having a bunch of strangers surrounding him, so he starts wailing and screaming.  I thought for sure it would scare the ladies away, but they seemed to think him even more adorable.

While Kevin was shooing to ladies away, I was taking the girls around to the different vendors.  When we arrived at the market, I gave each of the girls 15,000 won to spend on whatever little trinket they fancied.  Once their money was out, they couldn't ask for anything else.  Big Sis found a booth with book marks, fans, and many many different Korean little trinkets.  This was perfect for Little A, because all she wanted was a Korean hand fan.  M&M found a bag that folds into a super small bag, Big Sis found some book marks, and they all were excited about the goods they acquired.  Kevin and I found some magnets.

It was well past lunch time and the kids were absolutely starving.  We found a restaurant across the street and since the kids were past the point of no return, we went on in.  We found a seat and were greeted by a Korean menu and smiling faces that didn't speak a word of English.  Luckily there were pictures on the wall with the different food options.  I walked over the the wall with the waiter, and pointed out 5 different options in the hope that at least one would be good.

As we were waiting for our food, Little Monster was getting out of control loud, the girls were fighting and complaining and making quite a scene.  As we are sitting at the table we keep trying to look for silverware.  Kevin tried to get the waiters attention, without any hope.  Then the man next to us very pointedly looks at us and then very slowly opens a little hidden drawer on the side of his table and it has napkins and silverware in it.  We look on the side of our table and find the same type of drawer!  The only problem is that there were only metal chopsticks and spoons in the drawer.

The food gets brought out one by one as it is finished cooking.  The kids are so hungry, they dive for the food.  They have no idea how to use chopsticks, and are using them to pierce the food that can be pierced.  They are fighting over the foods that taste good and are making a very big scene.  About this time, two of the kitchen workers come out and just stand there smiling and talking to themselves and laughing at us.  The kids are really struggling at this point, and despite Kevin and my pleas to please keep quiet and attempt to use the chopsticks, it's impossible.  One of the kitchen workers comes over laughing and hands us all forks.  He then takes my food (Which looked absolutely delicious with all sorts of vegetables separated around the edge of a bowl with an egg in the middle) and mixes weird stuff in it and then takes a knife and proceeds to cut up and mix my food until it looks like throw up. Little A has honey mustard on her plate for her chicken and when her chicken is all gone, she then takes her hands and is using her finger to lick up the honey mustard.  At this point we are a 6 man circus for the Korean Restaurant.  Our entire table is surrounded by the staff who are smiling and chattering to themselves in Korean and laughing.  One man is down on his knees and is literally in M&M's face laughing.  When Little A has licked up all the honey mustard, the staff must have wanted the circus to continue because she runs to the back and brings two more small bowls of honey mustard and places them infant of Little A.

I have literally arrived at the point where I feel I am walking the walk of shame.  There's nothing I can do but shrug my shoulder and just go with the flow and laugh along with the entire restaurant staff laughing at us.  Oh well, at least we got some great food, were the center of attention, and made some Koreans think Americans are absolutely ridiculous.  So.... Embarrassing!  But that's the life of a parent.

Trick Eye Museum Seoul

After being in the hot sun all day at the Gyeongbokgung Palace, we decided to do an indoor activity.  The Trick Eye Museum had high reviews and it was indoor!  We took the subway to the Hongik University Station.  I followed the directions I found on the Tour Korea app, until the very last step which had me turn down a street between two stores.  I could only find one of the named stores.  We turned down what seemed to be an outdoor market.  After about 200 yards and still seeing only markets, we knew we took a wrong turn somewhere.  We walked back to the main road and luckily there was a tourist information kiosk right across the street.  I went in and found out I should have turned one street sooner.  They also gave me a 20% off coupon for the museum!  Score!!  We went down the correct road and found the museum.  The museum was in the basement, and we had to walk down a flight of stairs.  We are greeted by three art exhibit photo spots.  Each had a slightly inappropriate attribute.  There was also a sign above the ticket counter and it said adults only, no children and no something else that is innapropriate for a rated G blog (or PG or even a PG-13).  We finally noticed it was a “Love Museum”.  Not what we wanted. The Trick Eye was one more level down.  I don’t know about you, but it would make more sense to put the Love Museum on the bottom floor, so kids didn’t have to walk past the three exhibits. That was frustrating...

We get to the correct museum and the very first thing we see is a painting on the floor of a waterfall and a  bridge crossing the waterfall.  At first look, it seems strange to see the log, but then Big Sis stands on the log and pretends to walk across it, and at that point the entire painting comes alive!!  Not alive as in it was moving, but alive as in it seriously looked real!  We finally realize it's called the Trick Eye Museum because we are able to participate in the paintings and they come alive and become real to the eye as we are able to step in, on and out of the art exhibits. 

When we buy the tickets, the lady asks if I have a smartphone, and tells me to download the Trick Eye app.  After downloading the app, she shows me how to use it.  When you take pictures with the app, or look at the art with the app, it literally comes alive through the phone.  The first scene is of a volcano.  The kids stand around the volcano and when we look through the app and take a picture or video though the app, the volcano erupts and blows rocks all around the kids.  One strange thing about the volcano art is a little kid (or it could have been an alien) is standing at the foot of the volcano looking as if screaming, but it had it’s pants down and was in underwear.  We should have taken our hint from this subtle mark for a few exhibits to come, but at the time we just thought it was weird. 

The next room had about 6 or 7 exhibits.  The favorite from this room was definitely the flying unicorns (M&M’s dream come true!)

and riding on a dolphon (Big Sis and Little A’s dream come true).  

There was a neat painting in the corner, which appeared to be a bird breaking into a bottle.  In this room there was three mermaids with a completely nude top.  Little A sticks her head in for one of the mermaids and says “Take a Picture, I’m a mermaid!”, but it is so real looking that it is seriously inappropriate.  She doesn’t understand what’s wrong.  Lol!  Oh the innocent little ones. 

The next room had about 6-7 exhibits also.  We have fun in a room that uses space to portray things larger and smaller!

Here are a few from this room:

We are welcomed in the next room by three boys peeing in a lake.  We get a full front view of all the boys.  The girls all turn away and protest their disgust.  All I hear are “Ewwwww”, “Grosss”, and “Why is that here?”  But in the same room Big Sis saves M&M from being eaten by a gigantic human eating fish.

The next room had a life size painted swimming pool with many photo opportunities.  The kids all have fun pretending to synchronize swim, and dive off boards. 

Little Monster and Little A are able to swim in an aquarium,

I’m nominated for a Grammy Award,

Big Sis grows wings,

then I grown wings.

The last room is like an enchanted room!  This is by far my favorite room!  The paintings are vibrant and so gorgeous!  Big Sis walks up stairs to heaven.

The kids ride in a boat on a lake,

then climb up a bamboo tree.

In each room there was at least one exhibit that had some portion of nudity or something inappropriate.  It was disappointing that it had these as part of the experience.  We just told the kids it must be Korean culture and we just don’t participate in those exhibits.  It was a great opportunity to teach our kids about different cultures and also about what to do if faced with something inappropriate.  

There were two parts to the Trick Eye Museum, one was the 3-dimensional picture section and the other was an Ice World.  Outside the Ice World was a room size picture of a frozen waterfall, where Kevin pretended to drop Little Monster and M&M was pretending to catch him!

There was also small covers outside Ice World, that we were required to put on.  We thought it was weird, until we walked into Ice World and realized the name is exactly what we were walking into.  We walked into a room that was below freezing!  There were ice sculptures of the insides of a house, a yard, and animals.  It was so extremely freezing cold that we didn’t get any pictures.  We basically ran around to see the rooms.  However, there was an ice slide.  We did stay in Ice World long enough to go down the slide a few times.  Now that was fun!  After being in Ice World for about 5 minutes, we couldn’t bear it any longer and ran out of the door.  We had such a good time.  The pictures were definitely viewed by each of the kids at least 10 times each.  They loved looking back and pretending they really had ridden on a unicorn or grew wings.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

We wanted to see one of the palaces in the Palace District of Seoul, and decided to go to the Gyeongbokgung Palace.  This palace is said to be the largest of all the palaces.  It was originally built in 1395!!  We took the subway to the Gyeongbokgung station and took exit 5, which dumped us out right in front of the side entrance to the palace.  As we exited the subway we were greeted with the banging of drums and the sounds of whining horns.  The kids ran ahead as they could see a colorful display of commotion a few hundred years ahead in the center of the courtyard.  

We arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard ceremony.  There were men with flags, some with a variety of drums, some with horns and some with weapons.  They were all dressed in rich colors of reds, blues and yellow.  There were two groups of men, one group was the band with the instruments.  There was another group with the flags, which marched around men with weapons.  The captain of the guard was on top of a tower wall commanding the men on what to do.  There was also a women over a loud speaker explaining what we were watching.  She would talk in Korean and then in English.  When the ceremony was over, they opened the courtyard back up for the tourist to walk around.  We bought our tickets then went to the front of the gate.

There were guards posted at the front of the gate.  They were standing there with their weapons just waiting for that picture perfect moment.  We were able to snap a quick family photo before the guards did a quick march around the front of the palace doors and through the doorway.  There was an amazing breeze through the main doorway, so we planted ourselves along the wall and sat down and ate some snacks and drank water. 

While sitting against the walls, the guards would do their rounds right past us.  The kids enjoyed a nice refreshing snack with a great show.  They especially loved the painting that was on the main entry hall ceiling.  We couldn’t tell if it was a donkey or a horse.  What do you think?

At 11:00 we joined the free-guided English tour of the palace.  We were able to learn that during the Japanese invasion in the 1590’s the palace was destroyed by fire.  It was later renovated.  The palace name means, “greatly blessed by heaven”.  On a clear day you can see Mount Namsan in front of the palace and Mount Bugaksan in its rear.  We were lucky enough to have a somewhat clear sky and were able to make out the mountain to the rear! 

This palace is huge!  There is an outer wall, and then to get to the main palace you have to pass through three gates.  The gates get a little larger until you get to the main building which is absolutely huge!!  We were able to see the king's quarters and the queen's quarters.  Kevin and I were in awe at how little was in the quarters.  Here the king has a gigantic palace, yet all he has is a cushion on the floor to sleep on and a small table he would sit on the floor at.  It made us really reflect at how luxury and unnecessary we live as Americans.  We have so many things that are completely unnecessary and just frivolous.

One of my most favorite places was where the King would have his parties and ceremonies for his army.  It was the huge hall in the middle of a man made lake.  It was so extremely beautiful!  The flowers and the trees made everything so green and colorful.  This was where we could see the rear mountain.  The kids came back to this courtyard three times!

The walkways were all cobblestone, which made having a stroller super hard.  Kevin ended up carrying the stroller around everywhere.  It was a super hot and sunny day, so when little Monster fell asleep, Kevin parked the stroller at the top of the throne room where a nice breeze cooled him and the little Monster off.  I went ahead and finished the tour with the girls. We ended by going to the gift shop and picking up a magnet to add to our  “Oh the places you will go” wall! 

N. Seoul Tower

The North Seoul Tower is on top of Mount Namsan.  We decided to make this our first tourist stop in Seoul.  We took the subway to the Myeong-dong stop then had to walk uphill to the cable car depot at the bottom of Mount Namsan.  There are multiple ways to get up to the North Seoul Tower, but we chose to take the glass cable cars up.  The walk to the cable cars was a little confusing.  All the streets were extremely narrow and it was difficult to see the street names.  Plus, all the street names we did see all looked the same: Toegye-ro 18-gil, Toegye-ro 20-gil, Toegye-ro 20-na-gil...

Since it was our first time looking at street names, we couldn't find them, and then when we did, we couldn't tell the difference between one street and another.

We finally made it to the Cable Car depot, and made our way to the cable cars.  The entire car is made of windows.

The clear car takes cables about 30-60 feet or so above the ground and has a magnificent view of the city.  It takes about 15 minutes or so to get from the bottom of the mountain to the top.  The kids loved having their faces right on the glass.  Little Monster was so excited he was doing a little dance.  Poor Kevin has a problem with heights, so the wall of glass and being so high off the ground made him a little dizzy. He was very happy when we stopped but everyone else was disappointed.

The disappointment didn't last very long.  As we got off the cable car, we were greeted by a spectacular view of the city and some gorgeous mossy stairs to the tower.

After one flight of stairs, we reached the Roof Terrace and thousands upon thousands of love locks. On every space available on all the fences we saw padlocks and combo locks all locked to the fence.  It was such a neat sight to see.

I saw the locks and said, "Dang, we should have brought a lock!"  However, it IS a tourist attraction, so right around the corner was a lock stand where you can purchase a key-less lock to place on the fence to declare your unfailing love.

The kids picked out a lock and we obtained a permanent marker and made our unfailing family love declared in writing on our lock.  Then with contention, name calling and pushing, the kids proceeded to fight over where we should put our love lock.  "Can you feel the love tonight?"

After a good 10 minutes of breaking up fights and yelling at the kids that this is supposed to be a "love" lock and we are supposed to love each other, we finally agreed on the perfect spot for our not-so-love lock.  The kids quickly forgot about fighting, all agreed they had personally picked the best spot and then fought over who would put the lock on the gate.  At this point, I'm over the whole love feast and take the lock and lock it quickly on the gate.  They all cheer and again are a happy family, and I'm exhausted.  Big Sis declares that it's cool that we left a piece of our family in Seoul and we can come see our mark in South Korea every time we come back to visit.

The kids announce that they are now at the point of starvation, so we hurry up a few more flights of stairs to the restaurants.  They are so hungry that we go to the first place we see, an Italian restaurant called, The Place Dining.

We walk in, sit down and immediately realize we made a big mistake.  This is one of those anniversary restaurants that you save up for and go for your 10th, 20th, or other big anniversary date.  The menu only had a few items and I would have to sell Little A, just to pay for our meal.  Unfortunately, the kids are so hungry, and we don't know what else is around, so we just secretly decide to sell a kidney each and order some food.  I order the cheapest thing on the menu, which was a bowl of soup, we order a pizza for the kids to share, and then Kevin orders a salad and pasta. Little Monster is tired, hungry and super squirmy.

The restaurant does not have any high chairs, because let's be honest, we were probably the first shmucks to bring kids in the restaurant. While the food was lavishly being cooked (It better be a gold stove), I take the Monster out to walk around.  We go out the door and around the corner and are greeted by the sights and smells of numerous affordable restaurants,  palm to forehead!  I was tempted to call Kevin and tell him to sneak out of the restaurant.  Oh well, lesson learned.  And at least I can tell people that I ate in the romantic-amazing-view-on-top-of-the-N.-Seoul-Tower The Place Restaurant.  I will just keep out all the dirty details.

Kevin texts me and says the food is there, so Little Monster and I make our way back to the restaurant that will cost me a kidney.  I behold my bowl of soup and there is an 18 inch plate with a little hole in the middle that is about 3 inches in diameter.  There was enough soup for 6 spoonfuls.  The pizza has tomatoes and fresh basil on it, so the kids peel it all off and have two slices of the most expensive cheese pizza they have ever had.  Perhaps it wasn't really cheese, but grated gold.  Little Monster doesn't want any of the food, so I bust out a granola bar for him.  I can just feel the daggers being stared through me as he crumbled it all over the floor and himself and proceeds to vocally yell and express his hunger and exhaustion.

Since my 6 spoonfuls are up, I take him out once again to walk around.  We find a really neat lookout above the restaurant that also has locks covering the fence.  Little Monster runs all around and enjoys trying to pull the locks off the fence.

The girls one by one come out and join me and the Monster.  We enjoy the view, the locks and people watching.  Kevin pays the bill and joins us.  We walk around and go through a lighted tunnel.  The tunnel is surrounded by flashing and blinking lights.  All the kids enjoy the lights!

We see a few beautiful traditional Korean architecture, and more locks.  By this time, it is already past 8:00, and Little Monster is past the point of no return.  He is so very tired.  We make our way back to the Cable Cars.

The truth is, it really was amazing and incredible.  True, my kids were crazy and tired and hungry and fighting but that's the reality.  Gotta keep it real!  I love my family.  I love the moments we really do express our unfailing love, and I love the exhausting moments when it seems the walls will crumble with all the fighting, but it's my family and I love them forever, and I have a lock on the N. Seoul Tower to prove it!

The Cozy House- Seoul

The rental apartment that Kevin found on booking.com is called The Cozy House.  It's a one bedroom with a loft.  The room also had a small table and a swinging chair.  The kids loved the swinging chair.  There was always someone sitting in the chair.  There was a small bathroom with every amenity you could think of.  It had a small kitchen which was hidden by a folding door.

The kitchen was about the size of a small closet.  There was also great internet and the loft had enough beds for four people.  We brought the port-a-crib, so little Monster slept on the main level with us.  The room had a little AC unit, so it did take about a day before the apartment was comfortable.  The loft had a fan, but the kids never did get very cool up there.  You couldn't beat the view though!  We were on the 19th floor and it overlooked a great part of the city!!  We could see the N. Seoul Tower from our window.  The windows opened and that was a little freaky.  The kids were not allowed to play with the windows.

Walking to the apartment felt like walking in a storage hallway.  All the doors were super small and tall.  They looked like they were vaulted in.  Every time we walked down the hallway, I always felt a little claustrophobic.

The kids' loft was very wide, but it wasn't very tall.  The kids absolutely loved the idea of the loft and enjoyed it the first day, but by day three they were complaining that they couldn't sleep because they were way too hot.

I remember as a kid, I slept on the second story in California, and my parents did not run the AC at night.  I remember being so extremely hot that as a child, I would sleep in just my underclothes.  I suggested this to Big Sis and she was so grossed out at the idea!  She said she would rather sweat. M&M choose the best seat in the house.  She slept in the loft right up against the glass railing.  At night she would just stare out the window enjoying the beautiful neon lights!