South Korea - Seoul

During our trip in South Korea, we went to Seoul twice. The first time in the middle of the trip, when we sorted out visas for China and visited some very nice museums.
One of them was the national contemporary art museum, where we saw Paik Nam June's work "the more the better": in the middle, a huge TV tower, and around, a spiral ramp going up, displaying his works of small square plates like these:
And this is how the whole thing looks like:

Our second visit to Seoul was to organise the ferry tickets to China, buy a guidebook for China, and just relax, like in the Olympic Park where we spent the afternoon of the first September day:

What else about Seoul? Huge city, fascinating but tiring, lots of neons, lots of people in the streets, young couples going to motels to spend their Sunday afternoon, shops and shops and shops and people buying and buying and buying, lots of restaurants and western-style coffee-chains....

Recent activity

Today we are fetching our Chinese visas and then heading to the Korean East coast. Weather is getting less humid and we hope to do so hiking and swim in the beach.

Korean technology at the service of the tourist - part I

This post has just one bad picture of me, today, in an excellent museum in Seoul called Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. The entry price was expensive for Korean standards, 10kW (10'000Won) meaning a bit less than 6euros plus 2kW for audio guide.

This museum has two buildings done by known architects and it is two museums into one. A Traditional Korean Art and a Modern&Comtemporary Art Museum. With the best of the bests in the Traditional Korean Art part, showing very important archeological pieces found in Korean territory.

After entering into the building which is surrounded by contemporary art sculptures, after getting the ticket, leaving the backpack for free in wardrobe we go up to the 4th floor to visit it.

Here (and all around the museum), besides of all the labels in Korean, English and Japanese, with excellent light, we are using a PDA around the neck with a small phone on the ear and, as soon as we get close to an object it starts to tell about it, no need to touch anything. In the screen appears more pictures of details of the object, the same explanation and a bit more. We can also 'save' as favourites a selected number of objects.
(me with a PDA/audioguide on the neck next metal miniature pagoda from the 11th century representing the existing Goryeo architecture of that time - which was in wood. It is the Korean National treasure 213)

This was the second time we had an audio-guide. In Gongju, when visiting the tombs, we also got one for free with the ticket (which was merely 2kW, 1,3euros) which even had videos explaining more history about the tombs and the kings that were inside and so on. Just wonderful.