Well, after the frivolity of the night before, we slept until 11.30am, something unheard of. The room has blackout blinds, and so it felt very disorientating waking up.
I seem to have caused confusion with celebrating my 60th, very much tongue in cheek comment, based on Korean tradition.
We decided to have a quieter day, with Pete going out to find the bus terminal, which we would need the following day. He didn’t find it, he had found lots of other things but not the bus terminal. One of the issues using Goggle maps is that it shows driving routes and public transport routes, but not walking routes. So, when using it, it’s very easy to get confused and walk-around aimlessly, and hopelessly.
Pete came back, bearing gifts, including a cream roll cake. The Korean take on the popular dojima cream roll cake from Japan. No photos, as it got guzzled down quickly, light and airy and not too sweet.
Two heads are better than one, so after Pete had cooled down, we tried our luck together. The urgency being our booked day trip would be leaving before 8 in the morning, so there can be no margin for error.
Passed a lovely fountain. It was near to the Bank Museum Pete had visited earlier.
Not certain what it represents.
It was unbearably hot today, so we took lots of opportunities to go underground. There are a number of underground shopping malls in Seoul, we went to Hoehyeon one. A treasure trove of antique shops and many, many record shops.
There seems to be a bit of a lovely affair with vinyl here, with the wealth of record bars as well as places like this. Fuelled by nostalgia, album cover art, and something a bit different
We walked down Myeongdong food market, a bit calmer in the daytime, but equally inviting.
We passed lots of places, maybe more than twice, including Seoul Cathedral.
So….we hit on the same issue and couldn’t find the terminal,getting hotter and very frustrated. Eventually, I walked into a swanky hotel and a very helpful receptionist provided us with the right information. He stressed that Google Maps don’t really work in Korea. I think maybe I had read about that but had forgotten.
Success at last! We had been more or less circling it forever! We slumped in the lounge, taking in the airport conditioning, happy in the knowledge we had finally found it.
One thing I have been aware of here are the adaptations for blind and hearing impaired people. Lots of tactile markers on the pavements, yellow highlighted, talking crossings, tactile maps etc etc.
Korean Braille or Hunminjeongeum Braille is very different from other Braille codes round the world, very mind boggling. Numbers are the same, though.
Apparently, 5.1% of the population is registered disabled, but i haven’t seen anyone with a visible impairment here, which is odd.
We went to the 12 storey Daiso store, I was very excited as we had shopped in them in Japan. Although 12 storey the floors were tiny.
It was really disappointing, which is sad, but maybe heat exhaustion had hit me.
For tea, we had bimimbap term bibim means “mixing” and bap is cooked rice. White rice topped with blanched vegetables and chilli pepper paste.
Random Acts of Travelling 