Wendy’s Blog

Sometime last week as we were driving by Downtown I saw this

(note, this coat looks better in person! )

I meant to go to the store and check it out, but I have been pretty busy this week at work so I didn’t have a lot of time to go shopping.

Anyway, last night after dinner downtown I dropped by the store to see the coat. But they were closing. The coat looked smashing in the shop window.

The Mr and I decided to walked downtown to get a cup of coffee and get out of the house. I made him go to the shop with me. The coat is beautiful. I normally don’t go for a bright color, but it’s so pretty. And after the lady described the color as “color of number 2 pencil” I was sold.

I can’t wait to wear it around.

But I was not only person who had fun today. After coat shopping we decided to drop by the Celtic shop to get some Gooseberry Jam. But they ran out. I think the shop lady was surprised that Mr was into this type of jam. (not a popular item?) So they got talking, and turned out the shop lady was from Ireland too. I don’t think I have ever seen Mr so chatty! We end up getting some Strawberry Jam. The Shop Lady said she’ll order some for us.

Downtown Campbell has changed, there are more nice stores and getting crowded. It’s good to see the town grow.

I was sad to move away from Santa Cruz, but being able to walk down town (to pick up some jam, new coat, coffee, dinner, yarn, etc) is so nice I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Ok maybe like a grocery store, but hopefully some day that will happen.

Jet lag sucks. I tought I was over it, but seeing that I have been up since 1:30am, I dont’ think I have. BOO!

On the positive side, it does give me time to blog about our trip. (Or do some yarn shopping, The Mr probably prefer if I just blogged.)

Anyway, we arrived in Korea at night, and we were all pretty tired. So we went to the 7 11 got some dinner an went to bed.

We all go up at 6:00am in the mornig. After having our breakfast we had off to the war museum.

We had breakfast at a cafe in the subway. (Pretty much the only place open at the time)  We saw delicious baked item such as this.

I didn’t get any of this, but I think that’s dollop of butter and jam. (??)  We ate a lot at this cafe for the duration of our trip just because it’s in the subway station and on the way to everywhere we were going.

Then it’s off to the War Museum we go.

We got there way before they opened, good thing they had a big display outside so we can hang out for an hour or so looking at various military  vehicles (yawn!)

You can touch all the exhibitis if you like so that was kind of neat.

The mesume itself is pretty impressive. The Koreans had pretty interesting invention when it comes to war fare.  The turtle ship is pretty neat in person.  

 One thing I noticed when was in Korea was that the museum doesn’t lead you to the gift shop. In fact most of the places we visited didn’t have gift shop at all. Kind of refreshing!

This is one of my favorite piture of the visit. Mr next to the guy who’s wife begged him to kill her because he was about to go t a battle he cannot win. But he end up winning the battle anyway!

We were pretty beat after the 3 hours of walking around. So we hopped on the subway and went back to Isodong to look for a place to eat.

The guidebook highly recommended Sonchen, a temple food place.  The guide book never had any addresses, but just contain information like so and so restaurant is by so and so street behind so and so building. It was hard, I had to ask a information desk, and Mr had to consult the map 10 times. s I was getting really grumpy and tired of walking around we found it. It’s behind like a alley way and behind some other building. But I am glad we went. It was the most expensive meal we had in Korea (cost about 35 / person fo lunch).

The food was pretty good. There were a lot of food. For tiny little bowls of food it was pretty filling.

Mr’s favorite Korean dessert.  I ejoyed the meal. For vegeterian it was tasty.

Then we went back to the hotel for a rest where I downloaded the photos off my camera. (Here’s the tragic part.) I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera. So when we went to visit the Seodaemun Prision total bummer. It’s a pretty grusome place I guess, they had a gallow and and torture devices you can try out. 

After that we just all went home and went to bed.  It was a fun filled day. 

We flew back on Wednesday and boy was it a long flight. We had a 5 hour lay over in Singapore. Originally we were going to take the tour, but the 1:00pm was booked. If we go on the 3:00pm tour we would miss our flight so we just hung out in the airport. The airport is quite nice. A HUGE shopping mall really.

Between the 3 of us there are 1000+ of pictures taken, still trying to sort them out. Once I have them I’ll post them here.

Here are some high light and low lights of the trip.

High Lights

• Korea
  • Subway - fantastic - took us everywhere we needed to go.
  • Our awesome apartment
  • Random Korean guy on the subway handing Mr a coupon to McDonald’s
  • Food - oh so good food
  • Shrines
  • DMZ -watched a tourist getting his photo deleted because he didn’t comply to the no photo rule
  • DMZ - ROK soldiers in their ROK ready stand
  • DMZ - Over hearing someone saying visiting DMZ was like visiting Chechnya.
  • DMZ - Over heard a German guy saying “I don’t like to tell people where I am from because my people almost killed everyone.”
  • DMZ - Third Tunnel of Aggression - We were made to wear hard hats good things too because I keep hear people baning their hard hats on the ceiling.
  • A kind chef taking us around building 63 in search of the bar that over looks the city.
  • Isodong - super nice neighborhood and great place to eat
  • Olympic park - it is HUGE! (we went there because Mr’s cousin Barbra competed in the Olympics for Ireland)
  • Palace, palaces, and more palaces
  • Tombs
  • Korean War Memorial
• Bali
  • Staying at the Ritz!
  • Free food!
  • $100 spending money
  • Awesome BakBone swag
  • Ocean view
  • Elephant Safari (Hati Hati!)
  • Rice Field : Walking through the rice fields
  • Rice Field: Getting a new outfit (see Low light walking through rice fields)
  • Rice Field: Seeing vanilla and coffee beans growing in the wild
  • Free spa treatment
  • Temples
  • Royal Funeral
  • Petting a bomb sniffing dog
  • Walking to the Beach
  • Relaxing and living the Island life

Low Lights

• Korea
  • Seodaemun Prision - Forgot to bring my camera
  • It was so hot, and not in a good way.
  • Walking in the middle afternoon to building 63
  • Finding out that the observation deck on building 63 is closed for repair after walking there. (it was HOT!)
  • DMZ - Didn’t get to see the conference room because a meeting was going on that day. I am sure that the meeting was more important than bunch of tourists!
  • DMZ - NO PICTURES!
  • DMZ - Didn’t see any North Korean soldiers.
  • DMZ - Obnoxious tourists - Really loud Canadian woman that wouldn’t shut up.
  • Didn’t go out at night because of jet lag and tired of walking all day.
• Bali
  • Rice Field - falling into the spring water ditch
  • Rice Field - Camera got wet and sandy and broken
  • Rice Field - getting laughed by the locals while wet and shivering waiting for the van to pick us up.
  • Too short of a time spent there
  • Missed a spa treatment because we were too tired after looking at the royal funeral

Will post photos and details of trip in subsequent posts!

There’s a huge protests on the main streets outside the hotel.

I don’t know what they are protesting about but they are very very organized and no riots!  There are a lot of chanting though.

I tried to take a video but forgot my memory card in the computer. Bummer.

The photos I took are super blurry. I’ll post them when I wake up tomorrow!

Seoul sure is an exciting city!