A day packed full!

Backdating this so we don't all get confused! This was 2/22/14.

We were all up early on our first morning here.  Kendon and I of course just did this trip so we were fully prepared for this and warned mom and dad it would be this way.  So.... at 2 AM we were all eating frosted snowflakes (Kinzlee gave them a new name) thanks to the 7-11 right out the front door of our hotel.  The city stays pretty active later into the night and it doesn't get really going until about mid morning- this meant we had a good 7 hours before we really needed to get out to try to do much.  We spent this time preparing for our next couple of days and deciding what we really wanted to do before we had Parker.  We finally decided that we would do the Seoul City Bus tour so we headed out about 8 o'clock.  Of course by this time our frosted flakes had worn off so we stopped at McDonalds for breakfast.  We then headed for the bus stop (by the VERY easy directions from our hotel! HA-HA) where we could catch the tour. About a hour later, we finally found the bus stop only to find out the first bus didn't stop until 10:45- it was only 9:15!!  So we strolled down the street market by our hotel, which most was not open yet. This began a long walk of trying to find where to get on this bus!  It also gave us our first photo op which BBob gladly took advantage of with Ian.
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  We finally found the bus stop about 11:15. There were 27 stops on this bus route and you could get on or off as much as you wanted. We went one stop and got off at one of the palaces. This was the first time for the kids and mom/dad to see the guards of a palace and we got to see their 'procession.'  I'm not real sure if they actually changed guards- but there was a band and they marched around the front of the palace.

 

 

From this palace we found lunch really close (so we could go right back to that same bus stop!)-Burger King!  The next stop that we got off at was a mall/shopping center.  I was just curious about what was here and wanting to see if it was something I wanted to go back to.  I would have loved to go back there, but ended up not going.  The next big stop was the war memorial.  By this time, Kinzlee fell asleep on the bus (note the reason she is in NONE of the next set of pictures!) and Ian was getting pretty tired and whiney (remember we have been up since 2 AM!).  When we got to the War Memorial and Ian saw the planes and tanks, he lit up and he had a great time there.  He actually says this was his favorite part of the trip.  We know several people who fought in the Korean war, so this made it a little bit more interesting to walk through.  But my favorite, was the enthusiasm Ian had for it all.



For some reason he was VERY interested in the bullets. (Boys??!!)

I liked this with war memorial and Seoul Tower in background

If we had gotten an early start on the bus tour, it would have been a lot better for us.  By the time we were done with the war memorial, the kids were spent and we decided it would be better for us to go on back to the hotel, so that is where we headed.  We actually abandoned the bus and decided we could get back to the hotel quicker on the subway, and it was a perfect time to break mom and dad in to the subway as we expected them to do it by themselves at some point once we had Parker. The subway is actually very easy to figure out and easy to use! 

Sorry mom! It was one of all of us :-)

 

 

The rest of the time at the hotel was spent relaxing and very soon sleep for Ian.  There might have been a quick trip to the hot tub- this was their favorite past time of the hotel.  I don't really remember what supper entailed.... I think maybe a little bit of fend for yourself since the kids were more interested in sleeping than eating!  This was a very good day with tons of walking.  We got to see lots and even saw some we didn't see the first trip.