South Korea Day 4: Gyeongbokgung Palace

Andrew's sleeping is still off, but getting a little better. Sadly, his health has still been hit or miss. He feels much better after sleeping, but he is still congested and has started coughing now. And his energy level is lower than normal standards.

Today, we decided to visit the Gyeongbokgung Palace this morning. Originally, I had thought about doing it in combination with another tourist attraction in the area, such as the National Museum of Korea or another palace. But with Andrew sick, we felt it better just to take it easy again, only stay out a few hours, and allow him to nap in the afternoon.

Papa was back at work today so Ngoai, James, Andrew, and I took a taxi to the palace. The cabs here are very reasonably priced. Papa says they are the cheapest he has ever seen. A twenty-minute cab ride costs us around 10,000 won or about $10. Our cabbie ended up dropping off on the side entrance of the palace by the National Folk Museum. Upon first seeing the palace, Andrew exclaimed "Wow!!"

We entered the grounds and started exploring. It was absolutely beautiful!! The buildings and the foliage were just amazing! We walked around looking at the buildings making our way to the front of the palace to the palace gates to wait for the changing of the royal guards ceremony, which was pretty cool. After, we continue to explore the grounds including an area where they had cutouts of the outfits which Andrew enjoyed very much. They also allow you to actually try some costumes on, but the wait was too long and we didn't want to wait that long.

Since it was right there and had free admission, we quickly toured the National Folk Museum of Korea. We just wanted to do a quick walkthrough and peruse the exhibits. They also had a Children's Museum that was small, but it afforded Andrew the opportunity to play and explore things more age appropriate for him. There was also a small playground outside that we let Andrew play on for a few minutes.

We asked a woman at the information booth about places to eat nearby and in particular, Korean barbeque, and she told us about a street a few blocks up with lots of restaurants. We walked for a few blocks and didn't actually see too much that we were interested in eating at. There were so many coffee shops and waffle places, which we thought was a little odd. We ended up choosing an Italian restaurant because it had a lot of people there so figured it had to be at least decent. It was okay, but Andrew ate a lot of pizza so that was good.

After lunch, we took another taxi back to the hotel. Andrew slept a few hours while I slept two. Daddy stayed up deliberately trying to alter his sleeping pattern. Around 530pm, James and I discussed waking Andrew up so that we could eat dinner and see my parents. Andrew, however, wasn't too sure about waking up until we told him the Korean version of Rescue Bots were on the television. We had seen the toys in the grocery store and Andrew immediately had an infinity towards them. We have since learned the show is called Poli, the Robocar.

Andrew wasn't very hungry and ended up throwing up water and juice before even eating the oatmeal that I made for him. Daddy took him back to our room for a warm bath while I stayed back to help clean up. We let Andrew play Angry Birds on the iPad for a little bit before putting him to bed. I think we are all going to call it an early night and try to get more on Korean time. If Andrew isn't feeling better in the morning, we are going to have to figure out something else.