Korean Adventure Part 6: North Seoul Tower

One of the other adventures that Hubby took me on was a trip to see North Seoul Tower.  It was a bit like going to the empire state building as you can go up to the top of the tower to the observatory and have a view of the entire city.

To get to the tower we had to take the train to Seoul and then catch a city bus which brought us to the base of the tower.  Hubby's train pass worked on the city bus too which is kind of cool and we paid for my fare with change.  It wasn't very expensive.  When we arrived at our stop we got off and proceeded to the base of the tower.  traffic is not allowed up to the base so the bus dropped us off a the bottom of a HUGE long hill.  Have I mentioned how Korea is full of steep hills and stairs?  We paused a few times as we hiked up the hill to take photos of the city.  The higher we climbed the more we got a birds eve view but of course the real view was from the top of the tower.  We looked around at the base of the tower for a bit where they had a stone overlook and a pavilion of sorts and then went into the tower itself to buy tickets for the observatory.

Once we had our tickets we got in line to go out to the top.  We were forced to have our picture taken which they would try to sell us later but they superimposed the background on so it to me it wasn't even a "real" photo.  What a joke. I was not about to buy it.  Then they made us watch this video projected onto the elevator doors as we waited in line.  Once inside the elevator we were instructed to watch a video screen on the ceiling which played a video trying to make you think that you were flying through the roof. 

At the top we were able to walk around and see the city of all sides.  It was cool to see everything from that perspective.  The distances to various cities around the world were posted on the glass windows.  Supposedly San Francisco was only 9040.09 km away.  LOL... I couldn't see it.  They also had the distance to Chicago and Los Angeles posted.

The bottom floor of the tower is home to the national Korean teddy bear museum.  Who knew that they likes teddy bears as much as we do?  I thought teddy bears were mostly an American thing since they were named after Teddy Roosevelt?  We didn't go in but it was still interesting to note.

When we exited the tower we were just in time to see a show taking place right outside. There was a group of traditional Korean dancers/musicians and when they finished there was a reenactment/demonstration involving traditional Korean fighters.  They were dressed like samurai but I know that is Japanese.  I don't know what the Korean version is called.  I took a bunch of video clips but here are just a couple as an example.

North Seoul Tower

View of Seoul from the observatory