Dondaemun to Namdaemun and Ice Cream

Intensive is over!!! Kaley came over to my house after work on Friday bearing a gift...a delicious ice cream cake...complete with strawberries, cranberries, and lots and lots of ice cream!
YUM! Not only was it beautiful but it was delicious as well!

My favorite part was the bits of chocolate on the top. Baskin Robbins you sure do know how to make some good ice cream!

After indulging...perhaps a little too much...we met up with a hiking group, we met on Facebook and went on a hike from Dondaemun to Namdaemun. Apparently, back many hundreds of years ago there was a fortress wall around Seoul. This wall is now in the middle of the city because Seoul is so large. We started at Dondaemun and hiked to the fortress wall and then proceeded to hike up and back down three mountains while staying near the wall the whole time. The second mountain we were on was right near the Presidents house so we had to register and wear special badges the whole time we were on that section of the wall. We also could not take pictures...except in posted areas and had to stay on the trail at all times. There were a lot of guards on this part of the mountain as well. The weather was nice, but the sky was a little hazy. The views were spectacular even though there was haze over the city. It is amazing to see how huge Seoul is. The city seems to go on forever...there are so many apartments, business, and from the top of these mountains you were able to see all the different palaces. They take up so much space right in the middle of the city! The above picture is just a small part of the city. The city is actually MUCH bigger!

This is part of the fortress wall. I like this picture a lot because it shows how big the wall is and it was the only hint of blue sky all day. This is early on in the hike. The paths at this point were 100% ice covered, which made for interesting walking...most of our journey at that point was downhill, so it was like skiing. I tried to stay on the side of the path to avoid falling down and breaking a hip!

This picture shows the 600 year old rock and the newer rock. It is amazing to think about the history of Korea it is so much older than our country. The history you can see in places like the palaces and this fortress is actually quite amazing and exciting. This is early in the hike. The exhaustion and sweating has not set in yet and a smile came easily to my face!

This picture looks back on where we came. This is about 1/3 of the way through the hike. The guy who was in charge of the hike kept telling us "Okay we are about 30%, 40%, 75% finished" He was quite the character.

This is us almost at the top of the last hill. Exhaustion has settled in, the sweat has come and gone about 4 times, my hiking hankie is on my head, my face is red, and a smile is being forced onto my face. It was a great hike...The perfect amount of tiring. It was a beautiful day and we were able to meet some interesting people and enjoy the day. My legs were definitely sore the next day. We climbed A LOT of stairs and I feel it in my legs and my back side. When we were finished with our hike we went to Kraze Burger and had burgers and fries. It was delicious! The fries were so good they almost made me cry. Then we hobbled to the train praying for a seat. There were no seats to be found and we stood for about and hour and then made the mistake of sitting down. I was thankful we were the last stop...it was hard to get off the train...knowing that as soon as we did we had to climb more stairs...But we were able to get home and we crashed. We put our feet up and watched a movie. It was a great day!

Holly

*more hiking pictures are posted on facebook!