Autumn has finally arrived in all its glory! After teasing us for the past two weekends with the occasional golden gingko or blushing maple, the flora of Korea has set the landscape ablaze in a blinding display of reds, yellows, oranges, and pinks. I have been anticipating this spectacle for over a year now, and it didn't disappoint.
Even though the weather on Saturday was rainy, we still got ourselves on the 5500 bus and headed into downtown Seoul. Our destination was Namsan Mountain, a tree-filled oasis in a city of 23 million, and home of the famous N-Seoul Tower.
We started at Namsangol hanok village, a small but lovely little outpost of traditional Korean buildings on the north side of Namsan Mountain. One of the cool things it has is a time capsule that was dedicated in 1994 and not to be opened until 2394. The other cool thing it had as a quick way for Jen to see how she looks in hanbok clothing.
After exiting the rear gate of the hanok village we found ourselves on a walking path that seemed too colorful to be real.
Like us, many of the citizens of Seoul were enjoying the breathtaking and ephemeral beauty of the season. The people we talked with were very proud of their country and glad that we were seeing it in all its autumnal glory.
We were glad to see that, like the good people of Washington State, the people of Seoul weren't about to let a little rain dampen their spirits.
This lady didn't speak any English at all, but we ended up taking many pictures for each other.
She took some great pictures of us, but she fussed at people to get our the way so they wouldn't be in the pictures with us.
She took some nice shots....
but it's hard to resist taking a few selfies.
We eventually came to a place where we could take an uphill trail to the top of the mountain where the tower is. There was a man at the intersection who struck up a conversation with us. He turned out to be quite interesting, and told us about growing up during the Korean war. He said that back then everyone was hungry, there were no trees on the mountains, and all the houses were single story. He expressed deep gratitude for the American soldiers who died for his country even though they had no idea where Korea was before they came to fight here. "Look at my country now," he said, "there are huge buildings and cranes everywhere, the people are happy and well-fed, but they are forgetting what your country did for us."
After a nice, long conversation, we took our leave and headed up hill toward the tower.
But it started raining pretty hard, we wimped out and took a different trail back down the mountain.
This seemed like a good idea at first since it took us past part of the old wall that encircles Seoul...
...and past more pretty trees ...
... but we didn't come out where we thought it did, and we found ourselves LOST IN SEOUL IN THE POURING RAIN! Being hungry, we ducked into a little dumpling place and had a great meal, then realized that we were in one of our favorite places called Namdaemun market. You would think that knowing where we were would mean we weren't lost anymore, but that wasn't the case. It took us another soggy hour of consulting Gmaps on our dying phones to finally find the bus stop for home. It was a perfect example of what my father called "buying memories." Well these are some fine memories, so thank you for letting me share them with you. Hopefully next weekend won't be so wet and the fall lantern festival will be a go.
