Day 99: City Lights

I spent the night at Brad's last night, and it was great to have my first shower again after 3 days of having no plumbing and attempting to make do with sponge baths using water heated from the stove! LOL! The water actually came back on earlier than expected on Friday, when I 'experimented' with pulling the faucet and seeing water pour out around mid-day on Friday. Lesson Of The Week - never take indoor plumbing for granted!! But it sure was good to have a long shower - ahhh, hot water, firm water pressure, nothing like a good shower in the morning to start the day on a good foot! :-)

Brad, Andrea, Steve and I took the bus into Seoul and went to an art gallery near one of the palaces. There was a special exhibit that Brad and Andrea really wanted to see and were quite excited about, and Steve and I naturally tagged along. The exhibit was a visiting one from Japan, featuring painting and prints from a fairly famous Japanese artist. The theme of the exhibit was '100 Days at Edo' and featured 100 paintings, all of various city and country scenes of Edo, divided into the four seasons. The paintings were made quite some time ago (at least a hundred years ago I'm guessing) because they all depicted rather ancient times in the city. What was cool was that they had recent photographs of the exact same scene as illustrated in the painting right underneath each piece of art. This allowed the viewers to compare the city scene with the older painting and contemplate how much Edo has changed in a short period - a 'Then & Now' sort of idea. Really interesting actually!

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through Insadong, doing a little window-browsing, and then went over to the palace to watch a re-enactment of the changing of the guards. Very cool! It was a hot and sunny day and it was just great to be outdoors!
We then had some dinner at a really nice Korean restaurant, and then headed over to a nearby movie theatre to go and watch 'Troy.' I've been wanting to see this movie FOREVER, and was really excited to go and see it! It was my first time going to see a movie here in Korea, and I found out that movie theatres in Korea have ASSIGNED SEATING! When you buy your ticket you're given an assigned seat, whether you like it or not. I guess this has advantages and disadvantages - it's nice cause you can arrive last minute and don't have to worry about not having somewhere to sit, but kinda shitty if you don't like your seats, cause you can't just move somewhere else. 'Troy' turned out to be a really enjoyable film, but I'm always a sucker for historical epics!

After the movie we went and had some ice cream, and then split off. Brad & Andrea were tired and wanted to head home, and Steve & I were still wanting to hang out more in the city. Steve & I decided to go and walk up the stairs up Namsam to Seoul Tower to check out the view of the city at night. It was a warm beautiful night and good hike up the small city mountain. When we got to the top we were rewarded with a stunning view of sprawling Seoul, all lit aglow - 360 degrees of city lights, as far as the eye can see! WOW!! The tower was closing soon so we just hung out around the base - the view from there is still spectacular! It was only my second time up Namsam and going up there always reminds me of how GIANT this city is. Even from high up on a mountain you still can't see the end of the city - it just goes on forever in every direction. After enjoying the glittering visual spectacular, we hiked on back down the mountain steps and took the bus on back to Ilsan. Steve went straight to bed, but I stayed up a while longer and played Scrabble with Brad & Andrea who were also still awake. Good times!