Seoul. Day 2.

Today I took my time. On everything. I woke up at about 830am, after having been in and out of sleep since about 3am, only to make sure I made it down to get breakfast in time.

I did an initial test on wash clothes in a bag and hung my clothes out to dry in the bathroom. The shirt did not quick dry(tm).

Breakfast was great. I had a large variety of food to choose from, and ended up with a cross between a German and American breakfast. Go figure... ;).

Checkout was at noon, so I took my time eating and getting ready to leave the hotel. I was going to meet Zach at the Korean War Memorial(KWM) after he "checked out" of the Air Forced.

I made my way to the KWM, through the surprisingly confusing subway system. Not because everything isn't labeled in Korean and in English, but that you have to know that if you are taking a certain line the one going in the opposite direction isn't necessarily on the same platform.

Having sorted out the Korean subway system and asking a bunch of police officers if I was going the right way, I was finally at the KWM.

It was closed.

Good news was that a lot of it was outside. Jet fighters, tanks, artillery, and boats were parked right out in the open so you could get a good look at them.

I was waiting for Zach to arrive and ended up spending 4 hours there. I did find a cafe and had a beer out on the patio directly adjacent to the memorial.

You may remember that Zach does not have a cell phone plan and is therefor unable to consistently communicate via SMS. It felt like I had stepped back to a time before cellphones and had prearranged a time I would meet someone at a certain place. "Meet me in front of the Korean War Memorial. I will be standing next to the B52 between noon and 1pm every day, for the month of July." Obviously, it wasn't that bad, but it felt so archaic.

Having finally met up we miandered our way over to the hostel, where James showed us around the hostel and gave us a recommendation for dinner.

Korean BBQ is awesome!

After dinner we took a stroll through the area and I was taken in by just how busy everything was. It's a Monday night in a university district... don't these people gave other things to do besides shop!? In all seriousness though, the streets are very cool looking. Tons of signs and lights of store fronts taking up the little real-estate available to advertise that they exist.

We have to get up early tomorrow to see the DMZ, so that's all for today.