Meghan은 간다, Meghan ya no esta aqui

Pumpin' it up

Stephanie and I decided to splurge on Wednesday and pull out the big guns (this is probably a reference to my biceps), all tourist-like. We got directions from tour2korea.com on how to get to the Seoul tower, on Mt. Namsan. Easy directions, such as, "take exit 3 from the subway station and walk 30 minutes". You must understand that each subway station has numerous exits, and many times has 2 right by each other, on the same side of the street. When you exit the subway station from a particular exit, it kind of spits you out, and when you just "walk", you go straight ahead.

Not so in this case. We stopped immediately and looked at the neighborhood map, and found we had to turn around and walk up the hill. We had decided not to take any sort of transportation up the hill. We were prepared to walk 30-40 minutes on an incline and then be at the top.

Well, once you get to this road, there are no directions as to which way to get to the actual tower. You can see it looming overhead, but there are different paths and roads and trails. We crossed the road, and roamed up into the park, only to find a paved two lane road, much similar to Mt. Tabor's set up. We walked and walked and walked, never seeming to go up. We had to guess at everything because there were no signs of any kind.

Finally we just guessed, found some stairs and started climbing tons and tons of stairs. We finally made it to the top, covered in sweat, red faced, and I was cranky. There seems to be a recurring theme about me being cranky when I'm tired. Hm.

Anyway, we got to the tower, paid our outrageous entrance fee, and went up to view from the observatory deck. We took some pictures and then just went down. Not a huge deal, although nice to see Seoul from that vantage.


Autumn!


About halfway up.



From the observation deck at Seoul tower:



PyongYang, North Korea - 193km



I've been reading a lot. I read my first book by Toni Morrison - "the Bluest Eye"- which I enjoyed quite a bit for its sociological observations. I read Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", which I can't figure out how I feel about. I also just finished "Of Mice and Men" by Steinbeck, which I 'read' in high school, and needed a refresher. Good stuff.

posted by Meghan @ 7:15 AM