I meet I at 9:00 for breakfast. She was one of the helpful clerks at the tourist info center. We went to McD (again). The day was mostly sunny, cool. We decide to go to XXX Marine Park. We take the Line 1 subway, transfer to the Line X subway, and soon we were at the XXX stop. This is just north of the Han River, and the subway has just come up out of the ground to go over the river.
We walk down to the park. It is about 10:15 or so, but already the bicycle rental place is open for business. They have all kinds of bikes--kids, beach cruisers, mountain bikes, tandems. We walk to the east (left) and see a collection of floating restaurants on the river. Each is a different style. One even looks a little Dutch. Each of them have pedal boats shaped like large ducks. We decide to try one out. For 8000w you can rent one for a unlimited to--all day if you want. The duck boats are a lot of effort for a little distance. They could give you a pretty good workout. We don't go far--you have to stay within a marked area--but it is nice to be out on the water, seeing the view, breathing the fresh air. Suddenly the wind picks-up from the west and starts blowing us further away from the dock. So we have to pedal hard into the wind to get back. Yes it was a good workout!.
We then walk along the river to the west where there is a ferry boat dock, but it is closed. We then realize that the ferry boat we want runs from a different boat dock across the river, so we take a cab. Cost--3000 won, less then $3! The next ferry boat downriver to Yuoido leaves in 15 minutes, so we get our tickets (8000w each) and soon board. As part of the boarding process we have to provide our names and identification or passport numbers (I guess just in case there is a disaster).
The ferry is a double decker with lots of glass, so the view is really quite good. We try to sit at the bow but it is rather windy (we are heading west into the wind) so we retreat inside. We basically go from the east side of town, near Seoul Stadium, to the west side of town. The ride takes about 50 minutes. The day is sunny, cool, and a bit hazy. Not as clear as yesterday, but the views are still very nice.
When we disembark it is lunchtime. We are about a half mile from the 63 Tower, which is the tallest building in Korea. It is a sleek, gold-colored glass and steel tower, and there is an observation deck on the 60th floor. But first we get some lunch in a Japanese restaurant in the food court of the building. Then we buy our tickets (6500 won each) to the obersation deck. The fun begins when we get on the elevator, which is in a glass shaft along the side of the building. As we rise you can see the ground falling away from you, and see the view getting better and better. There are lots of school kids in the observation deck. Some of them are quite young, perhaps 5 or so, and very cute (as usual). The views from the deck are really quite good. We are about the same height at Seoul Tower, but 63 Tower is not a tower on the top of a hill. It is a 63 floor building on landfill. I notice there is also a TV crew filming from the observation deck, but we cannot determine what the point of the story will be.
I rest for a while and then decide it is time for dinner. I decide to go to Itaewon, a shopping and restaurant district. I take Line 1, transfer to line X, then to line Y, and get off at the N stop, which according to my map is right at the beginning of the Itaewon strip. The N station is the most modern subway station I have ever seen. The station is very vertical, because the subway is very deep. It is like a very wide steel and glass cylinder, which takes you via 4 tiers of escalators up to the surface. The roof is a glass dome. Wow! I then exit the station and try to get my bearings.
It turns out that I am not close to Itaewon as I had planned. But, after about a 15 minute walk I find my way to Itaewon and start walking. The street has restaurants and clothing shops on both sides. There are street booths selling miscellaneous clothing items, such as t-shirts, socks, hats, etc. There are men in dark suits standing along the sidewalk asking me if I would like to have a nice suite custom made. I finally tell one of them I am not planning on wearing a business suit for several months! Then he suggests a leather jacket, but I decline. I walk the entire length of Itaewon and back. At about the 80% mark I find a Thai restaurant and eat dinner. The whole experience of Itaewon leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. Very commercial, and the food ordinary and more expensive than other parts of town (at least what I had).
I then head back to the hotel. When I come out of the subway I decide to walk along and see if there is some street food that looks interesting. I had heard of a pancake type of food that has a sweet center. I find a booth. The name of the food is "hot-ta" (more or less). Each one is 500w, about $0.44! I get one and it is delicious. It is a thick pancake with a melted sugar/syrup center. I walk thru Insadong looking at the sites, shops, and people. On one side there is a saxophone player entertaining a group of people. He plays to his own recorded backup, and it sounds pretty good. There are more food stalls, and also stalls selling clothing items. There are fortune tellers, one in a little tent/canopy. And there are the souvenir and arts and crafts stores, lots of them. I walk into a few. They offer all kinds of interesting looking things--small statues, large ones too, pottery, jewelry, etc. Several places have fancy sets of chopsticks. I buy a set of metal chopsticks. I had not seen metal chopsticks until I got to Seoul, and they were provided in the places that I ate. I thought they worked pretty well.
I then head back to the hotel, pick-up another "hot-ta" on the way, and start packing-up for my flight tomorrow. I tell the front desk clerk to give me a wake-up call at 6:30, and soon after I go to bed.
The wake-up call did exactly that, and I rolled out of bed. I wanted to catch the airport shuttle bus that stops right in front of the hotel by about 7:00 AM. I had been told that it might take as long as 90 minutes to get to Incheon airport, and I wanted to check in by 8:30 for my 10:30 flight. That way I would have time to have some breakfast before my flight. All went according to plan. I got outside by about 7:05, and by 7:15 I was on the bus.
I was surprised by how much traffic there was (apparently many people work on Saturday), but we kept moving and arrived at Incheon at about 8:15. Incheon is built on landfill in the XXX sea, just off the western coastline of Korea. It is clearly a very new airport, very spacious, built to handle very large crowds very easily. And the place was pretty crowded on this Saturday morning. But no problem. Check-in at CP was a breeze, and I went over to BK where I had a bagel and coffee. I walked around the airport terminal, marveling at the architecture and the efficiency of the place, and then headed for my gate.
We started boaring about 9:50, and by 10:20 we were pushing back (10 minutes early!). The Boeing 777 was pretty full. It had 9 across seating--3, 3, and 3. I was in 60A. Luckily 60B was empty, and 60C was a man from India (I think). He didn't talk much. On CP they serve the special request meals first, and when his arrived I regretted not ordering one. He had, of course, Indian food, and it smelled really great. After a while the flight attendant came around and asked if I wanted the chicken or the fish. The fish, I replied. But when I received my meal it was the same as 60C--Indian food! Yes, it was a very nice lunch.
The bad thing about the flight was that the seats were very close together. I had not been that scrunched on a flight in quite a while, and I was a bit surprised that CP had placed the rows of seats so close together. Next time I will check to see that kind of aircraft I am flying, and if it is a 777 I will try to get a bulkhead row or some other place where there is more legroom. Otherwise the flight was smooth, and we landed in HK at about 12:40 HK time (we gained an hour time zone change).
I had read in the SCMP (South China Morning Post, the main english language paper in Hong Kong) during the flight that the HK authorities had a goal of making sure that incoming passengers were processed thru immigration within 15 minutes. We got thru in about 4 minutes. Amazing. Now I knew what to do--get the airport express train pass, head into town, transfer to the MTR, and go "home". Yes, it felt like I was going home. It was nice to not be going to another hotel! By about 2:00 PM I was home.
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