8 Seasons in the Land of the Morning Calm

We arrived in Seomyeon and walked toward the Lotte Department Store. We saw a sign for a yeogwan and walked up. The décor was nice, the wood was dark and there were plants on the stairs, completely different from the last. The room was sumptuous and cool; it even had a water cooler with both hot and cold water available. We paid a much more reasonable price and got two nights, took showers and got ready for our next vacation. Audrey had planned to get her hair cut at a salon in Busan and maybe even prepped for coloring, so I being the anal traveler that I am decided we should reconnoiter the area so as to make Monday’s trip as painless as possible. Also we wanted to see the Foreigners’ Street as our guidebook said it was an interesting sight. We decided to do that first and set off for the train. The walk to the train also included a practice run of the shopping we would do Monday, or I should say Audrey would do, in the underground arcade. We got off the train and immediate...

To start with, it is ill advised to begin a trip with a Martin without a hearty breakfast or a good night’s sleep. I suppose the trip started with some bad omens. They continued at the bus station where the nine o’clock bus was sold out and we had to get on the ten twenty, seated separately, luckily the seats were individual so we sat alone. The bus trip also took a little longer than expected because of all the summer weekenders going to the beach, but we got in at a relatively good hour, hot, hungry and tired, and in Audrey’s case developing a stomachache. Also, our guidebook put us closer to the city than we actually arrived, so it took some time to get on the right track (Literally, as we almost got on the wrong train). My sense of direction while traveling is always wrong, but luckily it is consistently 180 degrees off, so Audrey just has to say, “Let’s go the opposite way.” And we usually end up in the right place. We took a long and uncomfortable ride on three trains to ...