Not Alvin, but a chipmunk nonetheless

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We woke up a little late, because I stayed up too late fighting the automated hallway light that turned on at random asw we tried to go to bed. We decided to check out the Lotte (yes like the mall, and the previous hotel we were at) World Folk Museum, which is near the Olynmpic Stadium, I belive the entire facility was built to help educate visitors that came for the Olympics on Korean history. That being said, this place (and an aquarium) were anchored to a giant mall with additionally a themepark adjacent, complete with not-disney mascot

. The museum itself was clearly geared towards kids, which is great, because our understanding of Korean history was that of an elementary Korean child. Most exhibits had English in the plaquard. The centerpiece of the museum was a huge 1/50th layout of the Joseon era Gyeongbokgung palace, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung as well as other little dioramas of what life was like at the time.

The exhibits walked through the history of the Korean peninsula starting in the Bronze age, and moving to the Iron Age with the Three Kingdoms and then onto the Joseon dynasties. It was very well done, if a little aged and worn, being built 25 years go it deserves a cleaning and refresh. But it is totally worth a wander.

We then walked through the enormous monument to capitalism to get to a Korean Barbecue spot. We were basically the only ones in there and the server babysat us through the meal cooking the pork neck, razor-thin beef sirloin strips, and the pork loin for us.

Everyone there was super nice, even though it appeared we were cutting into their bid afternoon break time. (https://www.google.com/maps/place/SODAMJUNG/data=!4m10!1m2!2m1!1ssodamjong!3m6!1s0x357ca5746da52197:0x321e8ad66f34c284!8m2!3d37.5136318!4d127.1082052!15sCglzb2RhbWpvbmeSAQ9tZWF0X3Jlc3RhdXJhbnTgAQA!16s%2Fg%2F11c7t7cl37?entry=ttu).

We walked back through the mall to go to the Seoul Sky Tower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_World_Tower). For a not small amount of money you get to wait in lines and eventually take an elevator up to the 117 floor to then do some observing and buying overpriced coffees and drinks in the 123 floor lounge. We were smart enough to get the Lounge Package, which was an extra 10,000KRW on the ticket price, the lounge had drinks starting at 13,000KRW to include small Heinekins for like 20,000KRW! We happened to be there just before sunset so we held out seats for 45 minutes waiting for sunset.

Here the tower can be seen from the ground floor inside the mall.

The observation floors are some 480M tall, making them the highest thing in the area so you have great unobstructed views of the city. Seeing Seoul from this vantage really imparts the sense of scale. In that photo there are hundreds of spectacularly large apartment buildings, complexes of a dozen 1000+ unit buildings to house the 25+ million people that live in Seoul.

We then made out way back through the mall to take the train home.

Getting home we opened that bottle of fancy Makgeolli we sampled at the Busan train station, on the roof of our hotel to have a few glasses, but it is hovering around freezin here, so a few turned into 1. We went back to our room to research where to eat for dinner, and settled on a Tibetan Restaurant.

. Everything was significantly less spicy than what we have had before, though I think this was more authentically Tibetan, as it had less Indian influence than most of the Himalayan restaurants in the US/UK. The hardy noodle soups were exactly what we needed in the cool weather, and Ill be honest I was starting to suffer carb withdrawal, the last several meals were korean barbecue or what is effectively stirfry, no rice, or noodles or bread in sight, the dilicious Uszbek bread had cleared my system and I needed more complex carbs. The restaurant also had Tibetan Rice Wine, probably because of the widespread appreciation for Makgeolli here in Korea. It had a much higher ABV than the commercial Makgeolli we had been having, and tasted alot rougher. Given the special note on the menue to ask if they had any available, I think this batch was made by the staff, and not a big brewing/distilling operation.

We stopped at 7-11 for snacks on the way home, and now I am finishing this blog post, to have some sweets before bed.