It's Bedtime In Seoul

We checked in at the Holiday Inn, and celebrated Ellyn's birthay with some champagne.

We asked the Concierge, Ms. Park (one of several million in Korea with that surname) about a good place to buy subway tickets, water, and dinner. She left her post in the hotel and escorted us to to 7/11-type convenience store to buy subway passes for early in the mornng - our tour to the DMZ - and then took us right in to be seated in a reasonably-priced restaurant.

Every table has a hole in the middle and one of the employees brings around a pan of charcoal and a grill for cooking. No sissy natural gas here.

A waitress grilled all of our meat and stayed with us throughout. We couldn't quite figure if that was because we were foreigners who didn't know how to do things but the meal was excellent. It consisted of grilled beef and grilled pork. We had lettuce to use as a wrap and a chilled kim chee soup that had a lot of flavor - almost reminiscent of a gazpacho -without being too spicy for us.

We stopped in at a small market next door and bought ourselves some mineral water.

We're all finally starting to fade, as we only napped on the plane and we're no longer young enough to enjoy pulling an all-nighter.

It's off to bed and up really early to try to find our way on the subway to meet up for the the USO tour of the DMZ.

This afternoon has been a great start to our visit to Seoul.