Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 51 - Los Angeles, Seoul (USA, South Korea)

On our second day in LA we drove to Paramount Studios where we’d booked on to the 10am tour. After we’d cleared security we were given head sets and taken to our golf buggy. It was a really good and intimate tour, it lasted 2 hours and involved driving around the plot (the only working studio left in Hollywood) stopping to hear about the history and to see inside a sound studio where they film ‘Doctors’ and to peer at the fake New York street where they film to save money on traveling all the way there. Our guide pointed out things like the medical building that’s used as a beach hut in Top Gun and told us little trade secrets like how they wrap palm trees in paper so you could think you were in Denver and spray crushed cornflakes white to look like snow or how they make sounds like someones nose being broken by snapping a celery stick wrapped in a towel or loud explosions that are actually sound clips of lots of large animals like elephants and lions all played on top of each other. Although we didn’t spot any celebrities we had a great time. After the tour we headed to the Hollywood Forever cemetery for our picnic lunch (we didn’t stay long and only saw the grave of one of the Ramones) before moving Peanut further along Melrose Avenue to spend an hour wandering around the busiest area of the street full of vintage clothes shops and tattoo parlours. That night we decided to eat in again but popped out to a Bourbon bar first for a drink and to soak up the Hollywood atmosphere.

As our first day in LA had been beaches and the second in the city, we decided to spend the third in the mountains and drove up to the observatory in Griffiths Park. Although you couldn’t go in the building, the views were stupendous. The walk to the sign was too far for us in the heat (we didn’t see a cloud the whole time we were in LA) so instead we settled with a hike to the top of Mount Hollywood and a walk to a corner closer to the sign. The park is so arid compared to the palm tree lined streets of the city below and it was sweltering. Once back at the car park we took Peanut for a trip along Mulholland Drive, a road that winds up through the Santa Monica mountains ending somewhere near the Getty Centre. After parking at the Getty we took the tram to the centre at the top of the hill. Again, the views were incredible and after a short stop by the Impressionist wing and the sculpture garden we spent the rest of our time walking in the gardens and enjoying the panoramas and the architecture of the building itself. We left the Getty in time to beat the traffic back into Hollywood. We had decided to eat in again that night since we had the alarm set for 3:30am the following morning for our drive to the airport.

We left our house in the dark and headed off for the hour drive to the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. After fun and games trying to work out how to use the petrol station we dropped off Peanut and made it to the airport with enough time that we got shunted to an earlier flight to give us more time to make our connection in San Francisco. The first flight was painless and we made our way to the International terminal where we cleared immigration for our second flight to Seoul, South Korea.

We arrived in Incheon, South Korea and made our way through customs to find the airport bus stop. Everything is a lot harder than in Latin America, at least I knew enough Spanish there to get by and could pronounce words, here we just have no idea and it’s taken a couple of days just to remember how to say thank you. With a little help from the guy sitting next to Rhys we got off the bus at the right stop and followed our directions to the hostel. We checked in and after showers and phone calls home it was 8:30pm, we’d been awake for 24 hours and decided to turn in for the night.

We both had jetlag and were up stupidly early, it was the morning of our first wedding anniversary. We stayed in our room until breakfast then headed out to see some of the city. The Seoul metro is so easy to use (even if the hundreds of exits are a bit confusing) and we were at the stop for the Bukchon Hanok Village in no time. We had a quick walk around before heading to the Changdeokgung Palace, built in 1405, for the 11:30 am tour of the Secret Garden, a peaceful 78 acre area behind the palace filled with lily ponds and pavilions, ancient trees and a large library. We strolled back through the palace on our way out and headed for lunch which was an experience in itself. Since we can’t read the menus we’re relying on picture menus and just point at anything that looks interesting, when it comes out you get about 5 little dishes of various pickled vegetables and rice and even working out how you’re meant to eat it is a challenge. After lunch we headed back into the Bukchon Hanok Village, an area of Seoul with clusters of traditional Korean style homes with their patterned walls and tiled roofs, and views of the modern city in the distance. It felt really trendy, lots of handicraft workshops and galleries, coffee/tea shops and fashionable clothes stores. Korean fashion is very delicate, lots of shorts with oversized tops or pretty dresses in pastel colours, no dayglo or diamonte studs in sight. We were getting pretty tired by then and decided we’d have a quick explore of Insa-Dong before heading home. The area around Insa-Dong is a bit like Covent Garden, lots of souvenir shops, galleries, handicraft stalls and food stalls and the odd street performer. Back at the hostel we thought we’d have a quick nap before heading out for dinner. The next thing we knew it was gone midnight.

We woke early again still not having recovered from the jetlag. The plan for the day was to head to Suwon, 48km south of Seoul. After about an hour and a half on the tube we arrived and discovered a huge food court by the train station where we grabbed a quick snack and laughed at the £45 boxes of huge apples and the Spam gift packs (seriously, they love their Spam out here, you see loads of people walking around carrying their Spam gift packs, 9 or 12 tins in smart presentation boxes) before heading in to the old town. King Jeongjo, in 1794 had the idea of moving the capital from Seoul to Suwon and had fortress walls constructed around the city. The walk around the walls is about 5.7km and took us a good couple of hours with stops to admire the command posts, observation towers and entrance gates. We stopped at the archery centre on the north side of the wall and paid to have a go shooting 10 arrows, it was brilliant fun. On the western side of the wall we came across the Hyowon Bell and for 70p Rhys had a go at tolling it, it’s so loud it reverberates down the walls. On our way back to the station we dropped in at the Hwaseong Haenggung Palace within the fortress walls, built in 1700’s for the celebration of King Jeongjo’s mums 61st birthday. We had a quick wander around the market outside the walls before jumping on a bus back to the tube station. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the hostel and only headed out briefly for dinner at the Gwangjang Market where you can find Seoul’s largest food alley with some 200 stalls.

Still not completely over the jetlag we were up early yet again. We headed out on the tube to the Namsan Park to follow part of the Fortress Walk to see the city walls of Seoul and views over the city. We stopped to walk barefoot on the purpose built sensory circuit and to have a go on the many different exercise spots around the park, climbed thousands of steps, saw chipmunks and ended at the N-Seoul Tower. The N-Seoul Tower is perched high up above the city and all the railings at the base are covered in ‘love padlocks’. We stopped for a drink overlooking the city before heading back down to the tube. We stopped at Insa-Dong again on the way home to pick Rhys up a badge for his backpack and bumped into a girl who was learning English and had homework to find and speak to English speaking people. She walked with us from the tube to Insa-Dong and asked around to find a badge and even bought it for Rhys, she was so sweet. We stopped again for picture menu food, Rhys had a super spicey stew, before heading back to the hostel as we had lots of admin to do and things to book - South Korea gets very booked up and it’s not the easiest thing to find hostels in our price range at short notice.

That night we’d intended to do the Lonely Planet Night Walk of Seoul. We got a bit confused leaving the tube though and ended up walking underground to the next tube station and having to get back on to go back to the start point. That wasted an hour so we were a bit later than we’d wanted to be walking around. The walk took us past the Bosingak bell pavilion and down to Cheong-gye-cheon, a restored stream that was part of a big urban renewal project with footbridges, waterfalls and sculptures leading the way to a big spiral sculpture in the Cheonggye Plaza. From there we headed past the City Hall and the Bank of Korea to the funicular to take us to the cable car for the ride back up to the N-Seoul Tower. We arrived just in time to catch the ‘Soul of Light’ show, a short music and light piece where different pictures are projected onto the shaft of the tower. We headed up in the elevator, wandered around a couple of times admiring the view, bought some ridiculously expensive penny sweets and headed back down. We walked to the Namdaemun Market where we’d intended to eat but were too tired to bother and ended up heading back to ours with a bag of prawn crackers.