Freezing at the Palace!

On our first day here, Jac met us at our hotel and took us to a coffee shop for breakfast. Coffee is huge here! With our yummy morning bevgs we also had little waffles with toppings on the. (blueberry for mom, banana caramel for me)... They were delicious! After brekkie, we jumped on the subway to head to downtown to visit the Gyeonbokgung palace.

The subway is Korea is crazy! More lines than the tube i think! But it is very efficient: smooth rides, polite passengers, reload able fare card (the Korea version of the oyster). The ttc needs to take note!

We got to Geyongbolgung and had lunch in a cafe. I know I'm reiterating a lot about what we ate here (wait til I talk about our food tour!) but I'm trying so many new things with names i can't pronounce! Mon had a dumpling soup and Jac and I had some sort of sweet potatoe bake covered in cheese.

We entered the palace just as the changing of the guard was occurring. It was elaborate but we had no idea what was going on! After that we ended up on an English tour with an Aussie couple.



The palace was beautiful and probably even more so in the summer with the flowers in bloom. There are mountains surrounding each side of the palace which according to fend shui it makes it the ideal location. Unfortunately during the Japanese occupations, much of the original buildings had been destroyed to prevent nostalgic uprisings. They had only started rebuilding it in the late 80s.



Unfortunately, after about 20 minutes we all started zoning out on what the guide was saying because we were FREEZING! It was -7 feeling like -20! And the tour was an hour and a half!! We shuffled along, saw the rest of the palace grounds and then booked it to the warm subway as soon as it was over!

We had a late dinner of Korean BBQ with spicey chicken that was a little too spicey for my white pallet. Finally due to jet lag and cold exhaustion we called it a night.