Sites in Seoul

I love this city!  You never know what you will see while out in it.  Our family went out last night to look for a store that Russ was hoping to find.   We took the subway to the area we thought the store was in and spent about 30 minutes walking around looking for it.  We finally realized the store was actually in a different part of the city a couple of blocks away and decided to walk in that direction rather than try and subway there.  As we were walking I decided to snap a few pictures of some of the things we passed.  Nothing about this walk was out of the ordinary, we have lived here long enough now that many things don't jump out at us as strange anymore, but for those of you that don't get to experience Seoul on a daily basis I thought you might find some of these sights amusing.

First, we saw this cool "art" exhibit.  I had read about it a few times and actually was wanting to find it but never took the time.  We just happened to walk out of the subway and pass it.  I snapped a few pictures.

All these umbrellas look like they are suspended in mid-air.  I don't know why they are there but it is a pretty cool display.

A few were hanging a little lower and you could eat at the tables beneath them.

The tops of the umbrellas-they were all different and all so colorful.  How fun is that?

As we walked down a little farther we saw the entrance for a huge market.  We decided to walk through it...with about a million other people.

These pictures do not do the number of people in this small area justice.  At times you could move because there were so many people packed around you. 

This was a very Korean market, not a lot of foreigners in this area.  There were stands selling pretty much anything you can imagine from bedding to dishes to herbs to clothing to fruit.  Anything you could want you could find in this market.  The center of this market was filled with food stands and people sitting around them eating.  They were making all kinds of different foods at these stands.  Some of the food looked delicious...

Some not so delicious...

I have no idea what was in either of these huge tubs, but it was thick and not very appetizing looking.

 And some of it looked pretty gross...

This is a bowl of intestines from some sort of animal.  Based on the next 2 pictures I am guessing it is pig intestines.

Various pig parts.  That is a snout on top of the pile.

More pig parts.

As we were walking out of the market I saw fish hanging around waiting to be sold.

After we left the market we passed this coffee shop.

They seem to be pretty confident that they have the best coffee around.

We stopped to have dinner at a small restaurant.  It was cold and both Russ and I ordered soup.  When you order soup in this country it most often comes out boiling hot.  Literally, boiling.

In the end, we never found the store we started the adventure looking for but we had a great time exploring the city.  When just walking a few blocks leads to this much fun how can we ever be bored?  Like I said, I love this city.