{"id":1114,"date":"2018-10-29T19:07:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T23:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2018-10-29T19:16:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T23:16:32","slug":"day-5-incheon-and-seoul-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/?p=1114","title":{"rendered":"Day 5 Incheon and Seoul Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 4 was a relaxing sea day for us which ended with a beautiful dinner in the Tuscan Grill speciality restaurant (thanks to our Travel Agent Nancy!) The winds were a bit rough on Sunday night and thus our docking was delayed a little over an hour on Monday. It worked out for the best however as we got to see a spectacular sunrise and transit under the Incheon Bridge, the longest in Korea and 7th longest in the world.<\/p>\n

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After breakfast it was off to Seoul City. Korea has a history thousands of years old with many conquests. The city itself is incredibly densely settled. There is hardly a square foot that is not occupied by some structure.<\/p>\n

Our route took us past The Blue House, equivalent to The White House and home to the South Korean President.<\/p>\n

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From there it was on to Bukchon Hanok village. An ancient area of the city where locals like to stroll in traditional garb. The area is still occupied as it has been continuously. The streets are incredibly narrow, steep and winding with thousands of tourists scrambling up and down – dodging the occasional delivery vehicle or scooter.<\/p>\n

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To our Philadelphia friends, think Elfreth’s Alley built on steep hills with cars and ten times the tourists and you’ll have a pretty good idea.<\/p>\n

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From there it was on to lunch at typical Korean eatery. A hole in the wall down an alleyway.<\/p>\n

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We had to remove our shoes as it the custom in all Korean homes.<\/p>\n

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Then we sat and were brought all sorts of Korean delights – Kimchi (cabbage and squid), Acorn Jelly, fish heads, soups, salads). Some were delicious and some we passed on.<\/p>\n

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From there we explored the Insadong shopping area (neither of us are much into shopping).<\/p>\n

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Next it was on to the National Museum of Korea which was a gigantic edifice almost impossible to photograph. Quite stunning.<\/p>\n

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The Museum is filled with ancient artifacts, beautiful artwork, pottery and a massive collection of Buddha sculptures, castings and paintings. Way too much to take in in the 90 minutes we had to race through.<\/p>\n

Below is our guide, Kim, who proudly shepherded us around the city without losing one of his flock, not something we would have bet on at the start.<\/p>\n

Today is a sea day and tomorrow a travel day to Beijing and a flight to Xian so not sure what kind of connectivity we’ll have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 4 was a relaxing sea day for us which ended with a beautiful dinner in the Tuscan Grill speciality restaurant (thanks to our Travel Agent Nancy!) The winds were a bit rough on Sunday night and thus our docking … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casey-2018-fall-asia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NjUT-hY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caseyplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}