After leaving Daejeon, we soon got word from our friend Yan that she passed her presentation and now has her doctorate. In fact, the real reason I went to meet with my old professor was that he was also one of the five on the judging panel. My goal was to butter him up with memories of us crazy exchange students so he'd go into the presentation happy. Mission accomplished.
Tuesday, we met up with Younni and Gina to have chimek along the Han river. The area was abuzz with activity, and not just from the swarms of sandflies. The whole river has bike tracks along its shores, and plenty of grassy areas for people to hang out. So prevalent is the chicken and beer culture along the river are the delivery drivers talking up potential customers and making the orders for them. There's even a restaurant with the stuff here.
As night fell, the bridge lit up with an aurora of coloured lights, and fountains poured out along its length. Quite stunning really.
Wednesday, we finally got to Namsan Tower. We took the healthy (or perhaps stupid) option of walking up the bastard. 1.2km of stairs had us sweating and cursing in all the languages we knew how to.
Hitting the summit, we're greeted with the 1600 pandas exhibition, consisting of a panda for every one of the current living pandas in the world. Though, they're split up among multiple locations here in Seoul.
$10 later and we're at the top of the tower itself, which provides 360° views of the city, if only we could see it all. Smog is a real problem here, but we could still make out the silloette of more skyscrapers in the distance.
Like Paris, this is a spot for couples to attach love-locks to the fencing and other purpose built structures. I shudder to think how many there are.
On the way back, we passed through Myongdong and did some souvenir shopping. They make it easy here, with 5/10 packs of an all manner of trinkets.
Today, John piked, so I went looking for the archery range by myself. Unfortunately for me, it was closed, and to think it only required 10km of walking to find that out.
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