Since my sister was coming to live with me in Japan I decided to do something nice, such as buying us tickets to Korea for a four-day weekend! I submitted a chit and once that was approved, I bought the tickets and sprung the surprise on her 2 weeks after she had arrived! Two of my friends were traveling with us and one of them travels to Korea as often as possible, works with a missionary there and is pretty knowledgeable about where to go and what to do.

We packed our small bags the night before and the next day as soon as work was over, we were on our way to the airport to catch our 45 minute flight to Pusan. We flew with Korean air which was an excellent experience (I love all international airlines), we received a full meal during the 45 minute flight and we even got two free Kirin’s (beers) to drink. My sister and I were in the last two seats on the plane. It was great!

That night we took the train from Pusan to Seoul, barely catching the last one there and headed to our hotel which was located in Gangnam Korea, if you know Gangnam Style, then you will know that this suburb of Seoul is very up scale, even though we are not very upscale people. haha. The next morning we woke up and met with a friend of our friend who would be giving us a walking tour of Korea!

He was the nicest man named Tae Wook Kim and he was giving us a trekking tour for free except for our food expenses. What we didn’t realize was that trekking was more like hiking and we were definitely not prepared for that. My only saving grace is that I had decided to wear tenner shoes. Thank God!

We stopped at the Korean National Theater for a brief on the plan, were given maps, and then we set off on our journey. Boy did we see Seoul in a day! We walked all over the place. Probably around 7 miles. We walked along the ramparts of Korea, which is like a mini great wall of China and we hiked up this huge mountain to see all of Seoul from the top. It was magnificent. We took many pictures and one of the hardest parts was choosing the pictures to show here. We climbed straight down the mountain on the other side and walked to the Blue House which is equivalent to the White House in America. We went into the information center and took green screen photos with the President Lee Myung-Bak and his wife and we also sat at “his desk” and took photos there.

\As the sun was setting we walked through the lover’s area where I learned an interesting fact about South Korea. Normally, men and women in Korea do not marry until they are in there late twenties early thirties, which means they start dating later as well. Which means South Korean’s are very romantic people and they go on my dates to catch up for lost time. It was very cute seeing all of the older couples in this area. We tried all sorts of new foods, our favorite being dough filled with cinnamon and flatted like a pancake on grease. Those were great!

This was the end of our tour. The next day we went to a Korean Temple and Namdaemun a BIGG outdoor shopping center that sells everything and anything. It was great! I got part of my Halloween costume here (since I was being PSY) and we shopped all morning. We also bought the softest blankets ever. Ben took us for an authentic Korean meal with Kimchi (picked cabbage) and a few other popular items and then we were flying back so we said our good byes to our friend and I headed to the airport. If given the chance I would definitely go back to Korea. It was a great! experie

This article appeared first at The Cassey Excursion.