Monday, May 17, 2010
With a layover of about nine hours before our flight to Vancouver, we decided to go and check out Seoul. We discovered that they offer tours for passengers in transit right at Incheon Airport so we signed up for a five hour tour. It took an hour to reach downtown Seoul and our first stop was the 6 km long man-made Cheonggyecheon stream. A great waterway running through the city with walks and waterfalls. Very peaceful. Next up was the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Interesting architecture and lots of wide open courtyards but very busy with tourists. We then visited the National Folk Museum of Korea on the palace grounds. This gave us some good insight into traditional Korean life. After the museum, we got to wander Insadong Street for about half an hour. A really eclectic shopping district. We picked up two Korean hand painted scrolls and visited the coolest tea shop ever with amazing wooden lanterns hanging in the windows. We have to get a lantern like that one day. The shopping walk was followed by a traditional Korean lunch with bbq beef and stir fried vegetables with rice, then back to Incheon to check-in for our flight to Vancouver. Just writing this in the business class lounge as some annoying fellow is trying to play the piano! He just gets the tune right, then runs out of notes. A very impressive lounge but the piano has to go. Downloaded the Amazing Race finale to watch on the flight home but will have to wait until we are back in Calgary to see who won Survivor! Next stop, Vancouver.
The flight to Vancouver seemed to go by fairly quickly and we were particularly impressed to see all our bags arrive from Phuket in one piece. In fact, they were among the first bags to show up on the carousel. This allowed us to run over to WestJet to see if we could get on an earlier flight to Calgary. We were successful in making the change and left Vancouver two hours earlier than scheduled. We arrived home to some very excited little boys and were able to say that we were back home before we had left Seoul!
This has been the best trip we have taken so far and Cambodia is our all- time favourite destination. We have such fond memories of the people, the food, the temples and Amansara. All four countries we visited on this trip truly impressed us. It’s time to start planning a return to Asia!
With a layover of about nine hours before our flight to Vancouver, we decided to go and check out Seoul. We discovered that they offer tours for passengers in transit right at Incheon Airport so we signed up for a five hour tour. It took an hour to reach downtown Seoul and our first stop was the 6 km long man-made Cheonggyecheon stream. A great waterway running through the city with walks and waterfalls. Very peaceful. Next up was the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Interesting architecture and lots of wide open courtyards but very busy with tourists. We then visited the National Folk Museum of Korea on the palace grounds. This gave us some good insight into traditional Korean life. After the museum, we got to wander Insadong Street for about half an hour. A really eclectic shopping district. We picked up two Korean hand painted scrolls and visited the coolest tea shop ever with amazing wooden lanterns hanging in the windows. We have to get a lantern like that one day. The shopping walk was followed by a traditional Korean lunch with bbq beef and stir fried vegetables with rice, then back to Incheon to check-in for our flight to Vancouver. Just writing this in the business class lounge as some annoying fellow is trying to play the piano! He just gets the tune right, then runs out of notes. A very impressive lounge but the piano has to go. Downloaded the Amazing Race finale to watch on the flight home but will have to wait until we are back in Calgary to see who won Survivor! Next stop, Vancouver.
The flight to Vancouver seemed to go by fairly quickly and we were particularly impressed to see all our bags arrive from Phuket in one piece. In fact, they were among the first bags to show up on the carousel. This allowed us to run over to WestJet to see if we could get on an earlier flight to Calgary. We were successful in making the change and left Vancouver two hours earlier than scheduled. We arrived home to some very excited little boys and were able to say that we were back home before we had left Seoul!
This has been the best trip we have taken so far and Cambodia is our all- time favourite destination. We have such fond memories of the people, the food, the temples and Amansara. All four countries we visited on this trip truly impressed us. It’s time to start planning a return to Asia!