Changdeokgung Palace

Dan and I needed to regroup from being stood up the night before. So on Sunday morning, I was sent an email from an expat group that I signed up with, the group posts events on a website of what is going on in Korea. At first we debated on whether or not to head into Seoul because we didn't have any Korean Won. The night before we went to just about every ATM machine in Namyangju and they would not let us withdraw money with our card. So we decided what the heck let's be adventurous and meet up with the group at the Changdeokgung Palace (I figured the palace was a tourist spot and they would accept credit cards). We hopped on the bus, Dan was in charge of getting us to the location and I was in charge of remembering the location of where the group was meeting. Two minutes into the bus ride of course I forgot where we were suppose to meet the group. Luckily every subway station has a list of tourist spots and directions on how to get there. We hopped on the on subway in route to transferring to another subway we found an ATM machine that took our card...yah!!! As we made our way to the Changdeokgung Palace I was on the lookout for the expat group, a couple people stood out but I wasn't sure. Since the tour was in English Dan figured we would eventually meet up with the group, so no need to go introducing ourselves to everyone. With our fresh stack of Won we bought our tickets and waited for the tour to begin. A little info about the palace it was the favored palace of many kings during the Joseon Dynasty and retained many Korean elements dating from the Three Kingdoms of Korea period that were not incorporated in the more formalistic Gyeongbokgung. One such element is the fact that the buildings of Changdeokgung blend with the topography of the site instead of imposing upon nature. The tour was very informative and we got to spend a few hours learning about Korean history. Along the tour, I tried to see if I could find some members from the expat group but I didn't have any luck because there were so many people. All in all we had a nice day in Seoul and got to spent some quality time together. Dan especially liked it because we got to learn some Korean history by actually seeing history with our own eyes.

Tan