In this post I will refer to Sarah as “The Vegetable”. You might not know this but when Sarah gets cold, she develops severe muscle atrophy, brain paralysis and speech impediment; in other words Cold Sarah = Cucumber.

So today we took the subway for about an hour to Suwon, “The City of Filial Piety” as it is known. During the Joseon Dynasty, King Jeongjo made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to make Suwon the nation’s capital in 1796. Part of this project was the construction of Hwaseong Fortress, a fortified wall running around the entire city partially intended to guard the tomb of his father, Prince Sado, which he had located there.  You can walk either on top of these walls or around them. We climbed around 150m to the top of the hill where the command post is still located. This point was the most strategic of the entire city where they could see miles away.

Today was an exceptionally cold day and we truly were walking on ice and snow. The Vegetable officially decided she doesn’t want to keep freezing so almost finished the wall loop and went back to Seoul.

We arrived at the famous Gangman district well known for the world hit song “PSY – Gangman Style”. This is the Beverly Hills/Manhattan of Seoul, there are many nice clubs and many Gangman Style references throughout the streets. We of coursed danced in front of the sign and will be included in the “where the hell are the noodles” video.

We then went to Kukkiwon, The Tae Kwan Do most famous school where all practitioners try to visit at least once in their lifetime. Unfortunately didn’t get to see the students doing any fancy moves to impress us.

Our last stop before dinner was this Samsung D’Light exhibition room where they show the gadgets that will be on sell in the future, The Vegetable fell in love with this high-tech refrigerator and kitchen that basically cooks for you. (look for Eitan on the top left square)

The true highlight of the day was dinner. We went to the Balwoo-Gongyang restaurant to celebrate The Vegetable’s getting old. This world renowned Buddhist restaurant serves the most gourmet temple/monastery food in set menus. The menus were all in Korean but because it was all vegetarian we had no concerns about anything being something we didn’t want to eat like whale diarrhea, dog testicles or any other weird food Koreans might eat.  It was a multiple course meal with many small plates; each one extremely fresh and unique, from marinated lotus flower root, elderflower puree with pears, artichoke soup and other weird delicious stuff.

After accepting our Zen food comma, the hostess gave us 2 table mats as gifts. We felt very peaceful and calm after this temple meal and headed back to the hostel in a tranquil state of mind.

Bonus Pic: The Vegetable’s cold booger.