Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Korea Vacation: Day Five
First thing of note about day five is that it was COLD. Like, -13 degrees cold. But, we didn't let that stop us!Whereas we all stuck together as a group the first few days, day 5 was our chance to explore on our own. Well, sort of. Me and Janet ended up doing our thing and Karen and Louis went of and did their thing but we ended up together by the boat ride. I also forgot to take notes on what I did this day, so hopefully I'm remembering everything correctly.
Day started with a quick trip to a Starbucks famous for being the only Starbucks in the world with a non-English sign. And after that is was off to another palace tour. Looked pretty much like a smaller version of the first palace we saw, but we also managed to make it to a 'changing of the guards' show as this one, so it was worth braving the cold!
After the palace we hit up a day time shopping market that was pretty similar to all the other shopping markets we'd been to. Then we met up with Karen and Louis and took a nice, relaxing boat ride along the Hun river.
After that we took a break at a local spa type place and met up with Haily and another one of Janet's friends, Min. The spa doesn't look like much from the outside, but it was awesome! Inside is 7 stories of random fitness and spa related things such as an onsen, gym, various types of saunas, restaurants, waxing, massages, and much more. I was about $7 to get in and while some things had an extra charge, the 15 some saunas were free use. And each sauna had a special theme/purposed. The different rooms included, a salt room, oxygen room, ice room, jade room, charcoal room, and this one really, really hot room. It was great! I tried every room at least once! We also hit up the onsen as well and all the girls got salt body scrubs for an extra $10. Something like that would have cost at least $60 at the spa I used to work for back in the States!
After the spa we headed over to Korea's famous night market. Janet wasn't feeling well, so she and Louis headed back to the hotel early while Karen and I kept shopping till about 4am. There is a reason it's called a night market! I picked up a nice hoodie and cute Burberry knockoff bag while Karen got some jewelry and cute sweaters. It was straight to bed when we got back to the hotel. Lets just say it was hard waking up for the flight home a few hours later.
After the palace we hit up a day time shopping market that was pretty similar to all the other shopping markets we'd been to. Then we met up with Karen and Louis and took a nice, relaxing boat ride along the Hun river.
After that we took a break at a local spa type place and met up with Haily and another one of Janet's friends, Min. The spa doesn't look like much from the outside, but it was awesome! Inside is 7 stories of random fitness and spa related things such as an onsen, gym, various types of saunas, restaurants, waxing, massages, and much more. I was about $7 to get in and while some things had an extra charge, the 15 some saunas were free use. And each sauna had a special theme/purposed. The different rooms included, a salt room, oxygen room, ice room, jade room, charcoal room, and this one really, really hot room. It was great! I tried every room at least once! We also hit up the onsen as well and all the girls got salt body scrubs for an extra $10. Something like that would have cost at least $60 at the spa I used to work for back in the States!
After the spa we headed over to Korea's famous night market. Janet wasn't feeling well, so she and Louis headed back to the hotel early while Karen and I kept shopping till about 4am. There is a reason it's called a night market! I picked up a nice hoodie and cute Burberry knockoff bag while Karen got some jewelry and cute sweaters. It was straight to bed when we got back to the hotel. Lets just say it was hard waking up for the flight home a few hours later.
