Wall and War Museums

Wall Museum

We woke earlier than yesterday but with a less “full-on” day ahead, we took it easy and had breakfast later.  We headed out to the nearby City Wall Museum to take a look at the history of the city’s wall.  The displays were very well done, showing the scale of the wall and the position of today’s landmarks.

The top storey of the museum had an exit out to the walls.  It was a little too hot so we didn’t do the walk on the wall but just made our way to the shopping area where we found a street selling shoes.

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Kim found only one designed that he liked but the man said that his feet are too wide for shoes in Korea, in general.  That was a little surprising to us!

After last night’s heavy chicken dinner, I felt quite bloated and didn’t feel like lunch.  We had found a box of very juicy peaches and thought that would do us for lunch.

Unfortunately I got hungry soon after we returned to the room, so we had to head back out again.  We ended up at last night’s fried chicken restaurant but opted for steamed eggs and a jajangmyeon.  The steamed eggs is something I grew up with, this one had such an awesome umami flavour.

While resting in the afternoon, we committed to buying a Renault Koleos from a dealer in Auckland at a good clearance price.  It seems like a funny thing to do in Korea, buying a Korean-assembled car (albeit with Japanese underpinnings and a French marque).

War Museum

Kim had misheard me talking about the City Wall Museum as the War Museum.  He likes war museums so Googled it and found the War Memorial Museum.  We headed there by metro easily as it was on the same line as our hotel, except for the hot walk at the museum end of the journey.

Even though we had allowed a couple of hours there, the closing time was a little earlier than we had thought and we had to vacate some 20 mins before closing.

Kim could have spent more time there but it wasn’t really my kind of place.  In the park outside, they had a large collection of tanks, fighters, bombers and a navy ship.

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Itaewon

We thought we’d take dinner in Itaewon as it’s one place that Kim might remember from a couple of decades ago.  We would have to backtrack to take the metro, or walk all the way there, or walk then take the bus.  We opted for the final option.

There was less street food that Kim had remembered.  I had not recalled any street food on my visit 11 years ago though.  The area, including its restaurants, seemed rather quiet and I suspect that the district livens up at night with bars and clubs.

With the limited choices, we chose Vietnamese tonight even though I would have loved to finish off our trip with another Korean meal.

We returned to the hotel by around 2000 for me to do a load of laundry.  Kim had been grumpy for the last few hours.  He says he’s tired, perhaps from the 25000 steps yesterday and 17000 today.  He knows by now that travelling with me is no holiday.

While he lay in bed watching videos, I shuttled up and down between the laundry and our room numerous times.  First the machines were in use, then to do the laundry and finally to check on the dryers a couple of times.