2025-07-01 Seoul and Mongolia: June 2025

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This blog is about our short visit to Seoul, South Korea and our three weeks in Mongolia.

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June 30/July 01/July 02 (Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday) – Flight to South Korea

After spending all Sunday night at the Emergency Room to deal with a very painful pulled muscle (or bruised rib) we were pretty slammed trying to catch up on sleep and then doing the final packing for this trip.

Will, Jessica and Liam showed up at our place about 8:15pm to help us finalize a few things and then pack up the car. The trip to the airport was quick and check-in was pretty easy. We settled into the lounge until they started boarding. Our gate was right across from the lounge so we didn’t have far to walk.

They had a nice meal on the plane...with a nice dessert of cheesecakes.

July 02 (Wednesday) – Seoul, South Korea

We all got a reasonable amount of sleep on the plane so weren’t in too bad a shape when we arrived at around 4:00am in Seoul.

NOTE: Given the time changes and the 12+ hour flight we actually missed July 1 totally.

We found our ride fairly quickly and loaded up for the hour plus ride into Seoul. The traffic was actually pretty busy for that early hour of the morning.

It was actually about an hour drive into the city as the airport is in the city of Incheon, on a peninsula outside of Seoul. On the drive in we had good views of various skylines. Not sure they were of Seoul but lovely nonetheless.

Fortunately, we have nothing on today and we had reservations for the night before so we were able to get into our hotel rooms immediately. And we all dumped our bags and slept for a while during the morning.

We were all up around lunch time and headed out down a nearby street...

for lunch.

There was a lot of street art...

and interesting art in the hotel.

Then we headed off to try to find a shoe store. Paul had accidently worn his slippers instead of his hiking boots on the plane, so all he had was his slippers and his tennis shoes. We found nothing for him as Korean men have a much smaller shoe size than him.

A display at the local mall

We weren't too hungry for dinner so headed to a ramen restaurant that was just a couple of doors down from our hotel. You pick your package of ramen, add a few additions from a small buffet, add an egg if you want. They had hot water and in a couple of minutes you have your ramen dinner.

After dinner we all were pretty beat and headed to bed early.

July 03 (Thursday) – Seoul City Tour

Today we met our tour guide, Anthony, and were off at 9:00am for our city tour. There were some pretty streets...

interesting buildings (old and modern)...

statues...

and interesting sights during the day touring the city.

This is the gate of the Gyeongokgung Palace.

We parked near the palace just in time to see a rehearsal for the Changing of the Guard. This ceremony is a recreation of the changing ceremony that occurred when Korea had an emperor.

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Video 1 of rehearsal
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Video 2 of rehearsal
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Video 3 of rehearsal
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The side of the palace where the rehearsal was taking place.

After watching them for a while we moved into the vast plaza in front of the palace for the actual reenactment.

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Video 1 of Changing of the guards
Drum announcing the start
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Video 2 of Changing of the guards
Entering
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Video 3 of Changing of the guards
Continuing
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Video 4 of Changing of the guards
Old guards leaving
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More Seoul Changing of the Guard
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Lots of tourists watching the changing of the guards

and then getting their photos taken before touring the palace.

Then we headed into the palace grounds.

This is the throne room of the palace.

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Video of throne room
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A sundial outside the throne room.

A temple on the palace grounds.

The Korean calendar years are given designations, similar to the Chinese calendar. We all checked out the astrological sign for our year of birth.

Then it was a visit to the National Folk Museum. The building was very new and very large and beautifully made. We spent a fair amount of time wandering the exhibits.