Our next task was finding the entrance to the place. We walked alongside the mountain, passed a botanical garden and arrived at one entrance. It only took twenty minutes of walking and constantly second guessing which direction was right. At the entrance we found a map of the grounds and saw the different roads leading to the tower. I had pointed out that there was a cable car that led up to the tower. On the map it showed the cable cars around a bend of the mountain, or there was a trail that led to it up and over a hill. So we chose the trail to save some time.
Once we got to the top of the trail we could see the cables for the cable car. We also found a restaurant and stopped to get a bit to eat. We were so hungry at this point. It was about 11am now, and our breakfast was only enough fuel to get us this far. Latanya ordered a beef stew and I got a pork tenderloin. Her stew was good but she did not like the meat. I ate all of my pork and then some. We also made sure to fill up on rice and some Kimchi.
Now that we were refueled we looked to see how far the cable car was. It was still about a thirty minute walk away. We saw another trail that led up the mountain. We made the executive decision to climb up (what were we thinking?).
The trail consisted of steps and different platforms for picturesque views. As we climbed step after step our legs began to burn and we realized this was going to be a climb. The stairs felt never ending. It made my climb up to Neuschwanstein in Germany look like an ant hill. While climbing we started to see the expansive city below. We started to get higher than any other building in Seoul then higher than most mountains and hills in the near vicinity. I could swear the air got thinner and colder. The stairs kept going and going… our legs still burning. We were being passed by local Koreans out for a Saturday walk and old Korean men, who looked to be about 90 years old. We still saw the tower in the distance. We kept going and fought off the pain.
After a forty minute hike we arrived at the cable car drop off point only to discover more steps to climb. Luckily it was not too much longer until we reached the tower. We bought tickets to go up to the observatory. We then walked in and took an elevator ride up to see a 360 degree panoramic view of Seoul. It was a hazy and kind of smoggy day, but we were still able to see pretty far. On each window they had city names and the distances to each city from our location. Each window was pointing in the direction of the cities listed on the window. We found the window with LA and took a picture in front of it. We also saw where we had walked from. We saw that from the level of the river where we started to the top of the mountain was too high of a climb for any human being. We felt liked we accomplished something grand. Not too many people can say they hiked from the Han river to the top of the N Seoul Tower.
After plenty of pictures we made our way back down the tower. We had some French fries in the food court and went outside to start our long journey back to Itaewon. Latanya found another road that had buses and we began our walk down the enormous Namsan mountain. After walking down the road for awhile we found the botanical garden we saw earlier and followed it down. We made our way to the main road and kept walking to find a new way down the Korean Hollywood hills. Our new way consisted of less windiness and more stairs with a nicer path.
We arrived back in Itaewon and we found the main strip. There were so many foreigners on the streets we did not know what to do. We wanted to say hi to them but no one seemed interested in saying hi to us. For them, they all see each other every day. For us, there aren't any foreigners really in our neighborhood. So we just walked amongst them and saw all the big American chains such as; McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Cold Stone, Coffee Bean, Starbucks, and of course Outback Steakhouse. It was our second citing of Outback. We knew there were a lot in Seoul and were not surprised to see one in Itaewon.
Itaewon today is a foreigner hot spot. It's located near the American military base. Itaewon used to be Seoul's red light district but has now been cleaned up and made into a happening district. We certainly grew found of it because of all the western amenities. Most everything was in English and most everyone was speaking English. This district cooled down our culture shock not so much for me but for Latanya. After walking around for awhile we made our way to the Itaewon subway stop and headed for home. It took two transfers and many stops and we were at good old Donong. We hopped on the 165, not the 165 dash something else. We then walked home from E-Mart to find our last steps of the day to our flat. Boy, were we exhausted. Our legs were still burning and our bodies were tired. We got home around 5pm and considered it a full Saturday. It was definitely a little different than our leisure Saturday stroll that we had originally planned. But we had a great time none the less. We marked off our first tourist site visited and will welcome the next one to come.
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