Daejeon

That weekend Kelly-Anne was off to Beijing so we decided to take a trip around Korea. First we headed up to Seoul to do some souvenir shopping in Insadong. We saved a bit of money by taking the slow train and as there was a lot to look at in the shopping district we spent the whole day there. The next day we decided to see some of the sights so we headed off to Changdeok Palace. There we got a tour of the secret garden for about 45 minutes. After which we left as the tour was taking forever due to the large number of people on it. We had more fun exploring the palace ourselves. While wandering we were given some tea based on random traits. In the end I got some cold tea for cold people and Brian got some warm tea for warm people. There was no hot water so I think they got confused by the time it came out. Brian's tea mostly tasted like dried carrots and mine tasted like some sort of grain. Very strange. They seemed to be doing a selection of things around the palace, probably due to Buddha's birthday being on the Tuesday. After that we headed to Changgyeong palace. It's very similar in style and like every palace in Korea but one, it was burned down by the Japanese at least once. There we wandered around the grounds and saw a great big pond with giant fish who seemed to like to skim the top of the water. After wandering through Seoul for a good while we found our final sight which was the Jongmyo Shrine. They keep tablets with the spirits of old king's and queen's there. There isn't much to see as all the tablets are locked away to trap the evil spirits. It looks almost like a big long stables but all locked up. The building was in a very similar design to thee palaces. As we had to get up really early the next day we decided to call it a day.