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>Bee the cartoonist
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Author Archives: speedracer
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>Joke o’ the day
>Who’s the real winner?
>Below are two pictures of Brittanies. One of these dogs won Best in Breed at this year’s Westminster Dog Show. One of them is Cho Cho. Can you tell which is which?
>Owen Wilson is…
>Uncle Kevin in Little Fockers:
>Gyeongju roadtrip
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What a great day today. We rented bikes at the train station and rode around Gyeonju, checking out the historical relics of the Shilla dynasty, which ruled Korea from here from 57 BC to 935 AD. This was the first major dynasty in Korea, we already checked out the third and last, and we’ll get to the second when we get back to Seoul.
Bee rode with Angie on a mini tandem and loved it. Frankie rode on a child seat behind me. Next vacation, we do all-tandem.
The Shilla buried their royalty in pyrimid-like mounds, which are now all over Gyeonju. I figure you’ve really made it in the “Dead King” category if people are still mowing the lawn on your mound 1000 years after you die.
The best part of the old stuff was the Cheomseongdae astronomical observatory (below). It consists of 366 stones, one for each day of the year, 12 stones at the base, one for each month, and 30 levels, one for each day of the month. Not sure what observations could be done here, but…
Then it was the Children’s museum, where B&F (with some help) did some archaeology, by putting together the urn puzzle below. It was especially hard because kids kept trying to touch Frankie’s blonde hair the whole time we were doing the puzzle.
For dinner we tried to go to the Terrace, which was just next door to the place we went to the night before. Unfortunately, the Terrace had new owners, and only served dishes containing abalone (!) but the owner directed us to the “Spoon and Chopsticks”, a Korean restaurant that definitely did not cater to tourists- no English in sight, but lots of great food.
Bee and Frankie didn’t eat as much as we did, so we treated them to Isaac Toast, where they made the grilled cheeses right on the street in front of us…
>Gyeongbokgung Palace
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Yesterday was our busiest day yet. We started out by ordering our own breakfast at Tae Geuk Dang bakery down the hill from the hotel. We were completely clueless as to what to order, but Angie is always good about asking. She looked up the word for “breakfast” (achim) and “what do you recommend” (mwo chucheonhae jusillaeyo) in our handy dandy lonely planet guide, and asked a very nice lady who suggested a big-sized roll that they could cut into quarters. It looked like it was custard-filled but otherwise was the size of a half-loaf of bread. When they served it, it turned out to be filled by a cross between egg salad and cole slaw, with a Korean twist of course. Surprise! Angie and I ate the whole thing, and frankie even ate a couple of bite. But, both girls really had ice cream sandwiches instead.
We took the subway down to Gyeongbokgung Palace, seat of power in Korea during the Josean dynasty from the 1500’s to 1910. The palace included a history museum, a changing of the guard reenactment, and lots of old stuff in general.
This is the stupa from the high-monk Jigwang-guska, a masterpiece of ancient Korean stone stupas, believed to have been built around 1085, making it the oldest thing we saw today. It was built during the Goryea dynasty, the one that came before the Joseans. The Goryea palace is about a kilometer away and we’ll visit it later this week.
Somehow, Bee and Frankie’s Korean outfit wound up in a museum. Who knew?
This guard was clearly intimidated by Bee and Frankie.
After the palace we met Angie’s friend Miyun and went to a very nice noodle restaurant. We finished the day in a place that was very familiar to us…
>First day in Seoul
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Angie has her last talk today, so the girls and I spent some time at the Seoul Science Park (map)
This was the leaning room. Reminded me of some places my family visited when I was a kid.
They had an awesome playground with climbing ropes and water displays. Above, Frankie is pushing the water screw that pumps water.
Here are the girls about an hour before they fell asleep in the taxi to the new hotel, and stayed asleep until 9 pm, when Angie arrived back from her talk. We were both exhausted, but the girls were wide awake, and stayed that way until the morning!
>The road to Korea
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Angie’s already there, and Bee, Frankie and I started our journey to Seoul today.
First there was the bus
Then we got bagels at the airport. The cinnamon bagel poppers were a big hit!
Here we are on the plane, I told the girls they were angels the whole way…
Not too much Korea just yet, but FYI, Swallows beat the Tigers today in ipad baseball FYI. Yeah, it was a 8-1 walk in the park for the Swallows, whose team captain, Barbara, really needs to find some better competition.
In celebration, barbara wrote the Swallows theme song. Here it is:
Swallows are going to win
They tickle everyone
They eat mosquitoes
Swallows win! Swallows win!
Some actual Korea pictures tomorrow…
Silly Sparty
Seen at the Sparty party:
What was he thinking? Only Bee knows.