The Alcazar in Sevilla

Sevilla's other big attraction is the Alcázar, the palace first built by Moores in the 900's. This palace combines the Arabic architecture of the Moorish period with Renaissance architecture from the 16th century.

Changgyonggung: 창경궁

Sorry, kind of lazy today... just photos... this was my second trip here, the first can be found here.

I was told that the chinese characters on this house mean something to the effect of "communication building" ... aka, where the king had sex.

Burial place for the placenta of births in the palace...

Love love taking photos of this sun dial. Actually won a photo contest with similar photos from my old camera 2 years ago, but the file size was so small they couldn't accept the photo in the end.... :-(

Make a wish!

The newly opened Gwanghwamun and another peek around Gwanghwamun Plaza

On Liberation Day (광복절-光復節) August 15, 2010, the newly reconstructed Gwanghwamun was open to the public. As long as I can remember, Gwanghwamun has been covered due to the construction, and I guess has been since 2006.

The history of Gwanghwamun is quite an interesting one. There's a good Wikipedia article here, but basically it was built in the Joseon Dynasty in 1395, then it was destroyed durring the Imjin war with Japan in 1592. It was reconstructed in 1867, but was torn down and relocated slightly during the Japanese occupation to make way for the Japanese Governor General Building. Then it was destroyed again during the Korean war and rebuilt with concrete in 1963. Finally in 2006 they decided to restore it to it's original position and original grandeur which is now finally viewable. (Please don't quote me here because the more sources I read, I keep getting slightly different dates and facts... this seems to be the closest to the truth I can get)


The location of the gate is very important because it must line up correctly with the rest of Gyeongbukgung palace behind it, but even more importantly, it must be in the correct fung shui (pungsu in Korea), or correct alignment with the mountain behind and the river in front. When the Japanese relocated the structure, it was no longer in the proper alignment with not only the palace, but with it's natural surroundings. (See here for another article)

Sejeongno, which runs north past the Cheonggyechong up to Gwanghwamun is a very historic street as well. Last summer a plaza was opened, running down the center of the street. Here you can find the famous monument to General Lee Sunshin, but that's just the begining.

Here is the statue of Lee Sunshin. As you can see, there are fountains on all sides, which I like to think of as Lee Sunshin's water park. Kids have a ball playing in the water here all summer long. It's like going to Oceanworld, I suspect, but without the lines and the prices.


If you keep walking past the wet children you'll come across a giant statue of King Sejeong, the most famous of the Korean kings and the inventor of Hangul amoung many other things.


Go around to the back side and you'll find an entire museum dedicated to King Sejong the Great and General Lee Sunshin below. The admission is free, so there's no reason no to check it out while you're in the area.

Turtle Ship

There was also a performance of traditional musical instruments here when I visited. First each played some more traditional music, but then got together and played some more modern songs with their instruments.



After leaving here I stumbled upon yet another museum. This was called Green Growth Korea and it was just a small museum dedicated to ideas for a greener future. It was also free, so I went in to check it out.


Here is Korea's energy usage for the past number of years. The last column is a projection for the year 2030.
Here is a model city with lots of little ideas for energy production and conservation. One cool one I liked was "solar trees" which were poles with solar panels on the top. I think solar panels are going to have to get a bit more efficient in order for that one to work out though...

When you get a chance, be sure to check out the new Gwanghwamun, Gyeongbukgung Palace and everything around Gwanghwamun Plaza. Everything except palace has free admission, so it can make for a cheap weekend afternoon. Take line 5 to Gwanghwamun Station or Line 1 or 2 to City Hall and walk 5 minutes.

Revisit to Doksugung and Gwanghwamun

Last weekend, a friend and I decided to get out and get some fresh air. Being on a budget, we decided to check out Doksugung. I actually accidentally found my way to Doksugung when I first arrived in Seoul last July , but I don't mind going again. We just wandered around, no tour this time around. There is also incidentally a Botero exhibit there, and though we didn't go in to see the exhibit, we took our photos with some chubby Botero statues out front.





After a romp through Doksugung, we decided to walk down and check out the new Gwanghwamun Plaza. While I don't know if it's worth a specific trip to see the new plaza, if you're in the area, it's definitely worth stopping by to check out. Lots of water spouts for children and a fantastically designed and well groomed garden.

Today I'm heading to Yongsan Base to check out District 9 at the movie theater on base. I was there yesterday too to see Up, which was so cute! I seem to be on base a lot lately, but it's so cheap to see movies there! Not to mention Taco Bell and other "real" American restaurants.

Beijing Post 1: The Forbidden City and Tienamen Square

I guess I never mentioned it since I've been uber busy lately, but I went to Beijing for our long weekend for Buddha's Birthday/Children's Day. It was definitely my favorite trip out of the country so far and definitely a must see for Asia.



We stayed at a great hostel called Peking Downtown Backpacker's Association. It is probably one of the best, if not the best hostel I've ever stayed at. We had a 4 person room which was 75RMB for the night ($11.00 USD/ 13,000 KRW). Our room had a private bathroom, with shampoo and soap included. The beds were pretty nice... for a hostel too. But the best part about the hostel was the staff. They were so helpful with everything and always got us to where we wanted to go by writing directions for us in Chinese so we could give them to cab drivers, or explaining how to get around on the bus. Since we had a huge group (9 people), they were able to hook us up with with our own private tours that cost the same as the group tours.

Anyway, the first thing we did when we got to Beijing was to head over to the Forbidden City. We got there at 3:30 and it closed at 5:00, so it didn't give us much time to look around. But, worse than that was the crowds here. This weekend was also a long weekend for China as well, and there were so many Chinese tourists, along with other tourists in the city that everything was so overcrowded on the weekend. We purchased tickets to see a special exhibition inside the Forbidden City, so we felt really rushed to get there, and it was on the opposite side of the palace.

Here is the entrance of The Forbidden City.

We quickly made our way through and I really didn't get a chance to take in much or get to understand much about the Forbidden City. I guess I'll have to go back to Beijing to go again.... preferably not on a long weekend.

We finally made our way to the special artifacts exhibition. If you like jewelry and that sort of thing, then you'll really like this part of the Forbidden City. It was nice there too because there weren't many people in there. I could finally breathe again...

A crown in the artifacts exhibition

After we made our way through the Forbidden City, we walked to Tienanmen Square. I remember when I was in high school I wrote a huge term paper on the Tienanmen Square Massacre. I had always wondered what it would look like in person. Really, it's not at all how I pictured it... but then again, I'm sure a lot has changed in the past 20 years since it happened.

There were tons of tourists walking around the square. Most of them were Chinese tourists, visiting Beijing for the long weekend
. This is Tienanmen. The actual gate itself.


There were police (military?) everywhere because every evening at sundown they have a flag lowering ceremony.

Here is the flag lowering ceremony. There were so many people here I couldn't see anything! I'm still short, even in China....

Jongmyo & Changgyeongung

Today we ventured over to Jongmyo, the Royal Ancestral Shrine. I was further delighted by the fact that you get free entrance into Changgyonggung palace when you pay the 1,000 won entrance fee to the park. It's a nice place to walk around, and you can learn a little about burial rituals, but I wouldn't rank this place as a must see if you are only visiting as a tourist with short time to see the best of Seoul. It was a nice place to take photos, since that's my obsession for the week. Especially the palace, because it's not one of the big tourist palaces like Gyongbukgung. There were very few people walking around. That could also be because it was a little chilly out today (3˚C) and windy. Anyway, here are a few photos I took today.

Dishes and utensils to feed the deceased kings. All utensils were dated with an expiration date of sorts. When the utensils had been used for a certain period of time, they were then buried.

A very Korean decoration placed at many of the gates within Jongmyo.

Shrine where the umbilical cords of the royal family are buried in ChanggyeongungNear the front gate in Changgyeongung

For some reason, this structure seemed more interesting than most of the others. Still not sure why.

For more photos, check out my photo blog soon.

A second trip to Gyongbukung: Photography

So, this past weekend I headed to Gyongbukung palace (yes, I know that's redundant) for a field trip with my Korean class. It was a beautiful, but cold and windy day... even a few flakes of snow fell while the sun was shining. I met some cool people and I took a couple good pictures. I wish I were better at photography... I have taken two courses one of which focused heavily on composition... why do I still suck at it???


Any photography critics out there with any critiques?

A Much Bigger Palace: Gyeongbokgung

We made our way over to Gyeonbokgung Palace last week as well on our touristic safari of Seoul. This palace is probably 10 times bigger than Doksugung where I ventured to on my own on my first weekend in the city. Some cool things about this place is the changing of the guards that takes place every hour, on the hour from 10:00 to 16:00 and the free English tours which take place at 11:00, 13:30 and 15:30 every day. I love the fact that you can find free English tours here at almost every tourist site. Anyway, in the photo above, you can see some of the guards at the entrance into the palace. Not quite as rigid as the soldiers in London or at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

A quick history of the palace before I show some photos. This was the main palace during the Joseon Dynasty in the year 1395. It was destroyed by the Japanese in 1592, and was not rebuilt until 1868 during King Gojong's reign. During the Japanese ocupation in the first half of the 20th century, most of the palace was yet again torn apart by the Japanese, save for only a few buildings. The booklet that I recieved upon entering the palace describes the restoration effort as "ongoing".

Gyeonghoeru: This building was generally used for events held to entertain foreign emissaries because of the wonderful views that you can't really see in this photo.

Figures on the top of Gyeonghoeru

Geoncheonggung: Described as a palace within a palace, this was a place where the royal family might go to relax or drink tea. The Empress was assasinated here by the Japanese in 1895.

The National Folk Museum. This museum is right next to the palace, and has free admission for the next few months, and has some very interesting exibits of Korean culture and history. You can see what kings and queens wore in various dynasties, see 20 different kinds of kim chi and view some old skool cars.. and anything in between. And its free right now, so it makes it even more worthwhile. :-)

This was outside the museum, but it shows something that we saw within the palace. Before they had things like clocks, people used the sun to tell the time (duh), but instead of saying a number representing the time of day, they used animals of the Chinese zodiac. Each animal represented a position of the sun, so for example, midnight would be mouse time, and... some other time of the day would be monkey time. (Haven't you ever wanted to shout that it was monkey time?) This shows it in a sort of sun dial the animals. I think two of the animals were left out of the Korean time system, but I don't remember which ones....

Anyway, if you want to check out Gyeongbokgung and/or The National Folk Museum, take subway line 3 to Gyeongbokgung Station and use exit 5, and you will find yourself right in front of the palace.