We saw lots of these as we walked around. It's like a ferris wheel for your car.
23 October 2007
Parking in Seoul
I think this is a good idea for parking in big cities:
We saw lots of these as we walked around. It's like a ferris wheel for your car.
We saw lots of these as we walked around. It's like a ferris wheel for your car.
Update Promise
I have to drive my mech tech to Incheon Airport tomorrow, which means I have to get up early. I promise a major update coming soon, but it might not be tonight.
22 October 2007
Day 1 in Seoul
After 14 hours of flight, and hour and a half at the airport, exchanging money and trying to get the rental car (note to self, when requesting a Navigation System in the rental, must specify ENGLISH), and 2 and a half hours to the hotel, I had light meal (Bulgogi and kimshee) and a glass of wine (Chilean Cabernet is popular on KAL and at the hotel) and went to bed.
I woke up sore all over, see previous post.
I met my colleague for breakfast, which is a buffet at the Hotel and very international in the variety of dishes. I ate smoked salmon (almost Lox, but not quite) with cream cheese capers, onion and no bagels. I had to use a sourdough roll. Scrambled eggs, rice, bacon, smoked duck, and angel hair, cold in tomato sauce with mush rooms and Caviar. Lots of caviar. They had kimshee on the buffet, but I had had some last night and did not want to have more for breakfast. I did not have the japanese sea weed soup or the "snail porridge", whatever that was.
Here is the outside view of my hotel. I am not going to try to write the names of the areas or neighborhoods in Seoul because I can't spell them and they were all in Korean(except for Itaewon), the written language in South Korea is actually called Hangul.
Went for a walk down toward the convention center, COEX, in the neighborhood where the 4 Season's Hotel is on a hill. Found lots of back alley restaurants and street vendors but in over 5 hours of walking only saw 2 and 1/2 western faces. Very homogenous culture. It made England look like a positive den of diversity!
We were looking for a brew pub or three we had found in Ron's guide book, but pubs don't open in Seoul on Saturday until 4 pm. So we ended up at this place:
Jacksonville! Even though there were almost no westerners anywhere near us most of the shops and restaurants had signs and names in English. And they were for the most part ridiculous, like this one. I had thin sliced pork and octopus in red pepper. Here and in a couple of other restaurants/bars I had trouble ordering a coke. Still don't know why.
Yes, that is me with a red pepper coated octopus tentacle, along with standard bowl of rice, kimshee on my right and a random bowl of soup broth with bean sprouts. So far nothing has risen to the level of flingy-lingy hot.
Wandered around a bit more admiring the architecture and getting caught in flash crowds (mostly when trying to cross a street) we finally made it to the Irish Pub that was in the guide book. They were having a Jack Daniel's festival.
In fact nearly every restaurant we saw had some kind of festival going on. The 4 restaurants in the hotel had a festival board so you could know what festival was going on where. The Tivoli bar was having a scotch festival, the western restaurant/breakfast buffet was having an espresso festival, the Japanese restaurant was having a wood mushroom festival, etc.
Going back in to the hotel we saw this:
Apparently Saturday in Seoul Hotels is wedding day?! Not sure. I expect there are going to be lots of unexplained things.
The rest of our engineers had arrived and we ending up eating at the hotel again. I had a BLT and a coke. This hotel does know how to cook bacon.
Stay tuned. The next day I go shopping in Itaewon and drive down to TaeAn. Exciting, huh?
I wonder if I can find grits in Itaewon?
I woke up sore all over, see previous post.
I met my colleague for breakfast, which is a buffet at the Hotel and very international in the variety of dishes. I ate smoked salmon (almost Lox, but not quite) with cream cheese capers, onion and no bagels. I had to use a sourdough roll. Scrambled eggs, rice, bacon, smoked duck, and angel hair, cold in tomato sauce with mush rooms and Caviar. Lots of caviar. They had kimshee on the buffet, but I had had some last night and did not want to have more for breakfast. I did not have the japanese sea weed soup or the "snail porridge", whatever that was.
Here is the outside view of my hotel. I am not going to try to write the names of the areas or neighborhoods in Seoul because I can't spell them and they were all in Korean(except for Itaewon), the written language in South Korea is actually called Hangul.Went for a walk down toward the convention center, COEX, in the neighborhood where the 4 Season's Hotel is on a hill. Found lots of back alley restaurants and street vendors but in over 5 hours of walking only saw 2 and 1/2 western faces. Very homogenous culture. It made England look like a positive den of diversity!
We were looking for a brew pub or three we had found in Ron's guide book, but pubs don't open in Seoul on Saturday until 4 pm. So we ended up at this place:
Jacksonville! Even though there were almost no westerners anywhere near us most of the shops and restaurants had signs and names in English. And they were for the most part ridiculous, like this one. I had thin sliced pork and octopus in red pepper. Here and in a couple of other restaurants/bars I had trouble ordering a coke. Still don't know why.
Yes, that is me with a red pepper coated octopus tentacle, along with standard bowl of rice, kimshee on my right and a random bowl of soup broth with bean sprouts. So far nothing has risen to the level of flingy-lingy hot.Wandered around a bit more admiring the architecture and getting caught in flash crowds (mostly when trying to cross a street) we finally made it to the Irish Pub that was in the guide book. They were having a Jack Daniel's festival.
In fact nearly every restaurant we saw had some kind of festival going on. The 4 restaurants in the hotel had a festival board so you could know what festival was going on where. The Tivoli bar was having a scotch festival, the western restaurant/breakfast buffet was having an espresso festival, the Japanese restaurant was having a wood mushroom festival, etc.
Going back in to the hotel we saw this:
Apparently Saturday in Seoul Hotels is wedding day?! Not sure. I expect there are going to be lots of unexplained things.The rest of our engineers had arrived and we ending up eating at the hotel again. I had a BLT and a coke. This hotel does know how to cook bacon.
Stay tuned. The next day I go shopping in Itaewon and drive down to TaeAn. Exciting, huh?
I wonder if I can find grits in Itaewon?
2 Days in Seoul
Because of the difficulty in getting flights I had to stay in Seoul 2 nights, waiting for the rest of the engineers to get in-country before we headed to TaeAn. I had to drive an Opirus (basically a luxury edition of the Hyundai Sonata) from the Incheon Airport into the heart of Seoul at rush hour on a Friday. Fortunately my Arab genes kicked in and I embrassed the chaos and made the 30kM drive in only 2 and 1/2 hours. Basically the rules of driving in Seoul are the biggest vehicle wins, and if you are both the same size, bravest wins. I was pretty brave, but I kept showing signs of weakness.
This is the room at the Seoul Palace Hotel. It is a nice hotel just south of the Han river that runs through Seoul. 4 Restaurants and a buffet breakfast, you can't beat that with a stick.
When you enter the room there a slot for the (old school) key and the lights come on. There is a control panel on the right side of the bed where you can then reduce the lights. It took a while to figure out because the button labels were in English, but didn't correspond to where the lights were. The bed felt like a sheet of thick plywood over a thin box spring. But the pillows were good. Extensive mini-bar, but I'm too cheap.
Huge flat screen TV, but not HD and only 5 channels. One was BBC, others Japanese or Korean. I watched part of the ALCS Game 6 on the Japanese Channel.
But the piece de resistance was the toilet.
Yes, it is the finest Korean robotics applied to the bidet. The controls are labeled completely in Hangul so the only English word was 'Auto'. I pressed that and boy did I get a surprise. Evidently it was invented by women because if I didn't finish my business fast enough it gave a high pitched ear splitting alarm. That's incentive. Also, the little spigot that sprays the water comes up and salutes you when you come into the room and put the key in the slot.
This is the room at the Seoul Palace Hotel. It is a nice hotel just south of the Han river that runs through Seoul. 4 Restaurants and a buffet breakfast, you can't beat that with a stick.When you enter the room there a slot for the (old school) key and the lights come on. There is a control panel on the right side of the bed where you can then reduce the lights. It took a while to figure out because the button labels were in English, but didn't correspond to where the lights were. The bed felt like a sheet of thick plywood over a thin box spring. But the pillows were good. Extensive mini-bar, but I'm too cheap.
Huge flat screen TV, but not HD and only 5 channels. One was BBC, others Japanese or Korean. I watched part of the ALCS Game 6 on the Japanese Channel.
But the piece de resistance was the toilet.
Yes, it is the finest Korean robotics applied to the bidet. The controls are labeled completely in Hangul so the only English word was 'Auto'. I pressed that and boy did I get a surprise. Evidently it was invented by women because if I didn't finish my business fast enough it gave a high pitched ear splitting alarm. That's incentive. Also, the little spigot that sprays the water comes up and salutes you when you come into the room and put the key in the slot.
20 October 2007
Getting Here
Flew over on a Korean Air 747-400, my first 747 trip ever! Got to fly in business class and elected to fly in the upper cabin. This seems to have been a good choice because the cabin was isolated from the rest of the plan and it pretty much felt like the 20 or so of us were the only folks on the plane.
The seats were like individual pods, and were for the most part pretty comfortable, if a bit dangerous. They were very mechanized and Ron, who was traveling with me, got his coattail caught in one of the seams as he was moving it to sleeping position and it nearly strangled him.
They allow actual metal silverware on Korean air.
Sitting anywhere or on anything for 14 hours is a chore. I had a window seat and had to bother the guy next to me whenever I had to go to the toilet, which even in business class was same old standard issue airplane bathroom.
Every time I moved or changed the position of my seat the flight attendant was right there with Guava juice. I like Guava juice, but it just compounded the problem of the previous paragraph.
I think I slept about 3 hours of the trip and by the time we got to Inchon airport my eyes were hurting from being open for so long. After about an hour getting money and trying to get the rent a car we left the airport. The car had a GPS, but everything was in Korean. The rental guy programmed it for us and we followed the map as well as we could given the traffic and with that and a combination of directions and luck we made it to the Seoul Palace.
The seats were like individual pods, and were for the most part pretty comfortable, if a bit dangerous. They were very mechanized and Ron, who was traveling with me, got his coattail caught in one of the seams as he was moving it to sleeping position and it nearly strangled him.
They allow actual metal silverware on Korean air.Every time I moved or changed the position of my seat the flight attendant was right there with Guava juice. I like Guava juice, but it just compounded the problem of the previous paragraph.
I think I slept about 3 hours of the trip and by the time we got to Inchon airport my eyes were hurting from being open for so long. After about an hour getting money and trying to get the rent a car we left the airport. The car had a GPS, but everything was in Korean. The rental guy programmed it for us and we followed the map as well as we could given the traffic and with that and a combination of directions and luck we made it to the Seoul Palace.
16 October 2007
Welcome
This is a new blog I will use to chronicle my trip to and adventures in Tae'An Republic of Korea.
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