EN - Departure and South Korea - Etienne & Aurore

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EN - Departure and South Korea

Here we are!

After one month and a half travelling between Dublin, the Brittany, the Dordogne, Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, Poitiers, the Deux-Sevres and the Lot, we're finally gone on our world tour. Thank you everyone for your time and good wishes! We've spent good moments with you and we keep good memories of them. THANKS!!!

At the end, we only had one week to rest and finalize our itinerary, bags and equipment.

What's inside Aurore's bag????

Result: 12 kg for Aurore (the selection has been tough!!!), 13kg for Etienne

This departure has been synonymous with DELAY! Indeed, since our Gourdon-Toulouse train, we accumulated delays: 2h for the first train (thanks to Etienne's mum and sister for driving us twice to the station, and thanks to Julien and Florence too for welcoming us in their flat at 11pm in Toulouse...), 1h30 for our Toulouse-London flight, 3h30 for London-Hong Kong and finally the big winner: 6h delay for our Hong Kong-Seoul flight... It took us roughly 48h to reach Seoul. At this stage, we were just dreaming of a hot shower and a comfy bed!

South Korea

Seoul

Landing time in Seoul: 5am.

The first bus for the city centre was at 6am so we had to wait some more... (one hour was nothing at this stage...)

We arrived around 7am in front of the hostel. Unfortunately, it only opens at 8am or so. We thought about calling the phone number on our booking reference but our phones do not work here. :(

Thanks to E.T.'s brilliant idea, we managed to use Skype to call the manager and get us in! (n.b.: using the hostel's WiFi network and WEP key we could see through the front door!)

Phew!!!!!

Even if it took us a few days to beat the jet lag, we started visiting on the very first day: Here's an extract of our pics:

Seoul City Centre

Guards in traditional costumes in front of Gyeongbokgung royal palace

A surprising car park!

A local lady! :)

A traditional Korean house (=Hanok) in Namsangol village

The Secret Garden of Changdeokgung palace

A market found randomly near Insadong

Ssamziegil galery in Insadong

We haven't lost any time to taste the Korean food either! We loved the Korean BBQ, the poor man's galette (galette made with green beans), the famous Kimchi (for ET as it's too spicy for Aurore...)

Korean BBQ, yummy!

The shrimp soup was so spicy that E.T. cried!

Rice wine degustation with our new friends: Samuel S. Jee et D.C. Kang.

"Kimchiiii!"

France, especially Paris, is everywhere: bakeries, beauty salon... We tasted some pastries and they've got nothing to envy us!

We've even been invited to diner in Mr Kim's house, a friend of Aurore's family. We've been welcomed like kings!

We love Seoul: it's modern, dynamic, with a lot of art shops like Aurore likes them :-), Korean people look relax, easy-going and used to see European faces. Contrary to China, we don't feel stared at us.

Aurore's best memories: Insadong.

E.T.'s best memories: Korean BBQ

Gyeongju

(south of the country)

We took the Korean TGV: the KTX! It goes up to 300km/h too, so the trip was fairly quick. This city seemed very small to us, a lot more rural than Seoul but touristic visits were interesting. We met several travellers in the hostel, among them Rheza, an Indonesian guy, we plan to meet in Bandung where he lives.

Daereungwon royal tombs

The Hanok (traditional house) we stayed in...

... and the bedroom!

Yangdong village

One of the oldest house in Yangdong village

Best memories in Gyeongju: Yangdong village.

Busan

(south of the country)

After about an hour by bus from Gyeongju, we arrived in Busan, second city of South Korea after Seoul. The city is by the seaside and the beach is only 5 minutes away from our hostel!