Korea, Day 2, Seoul, continued

When we left the museum, we were hungry, so we headed over to Myeongdong for lunch.  My friend took me to a Korean noodle restaurant in that neighborhood.  On the way, from the bus stop to the restaurant, we passed many stores of all sorts, with folks out front calling welcoming sorts of things in Korean and Japanese--come in, it's cool, we have what you're looking for--sorts of stuff.  They had microphones, and tried to be heard over the other criers in front of the other stores.  Some folks dressed up in funny costumes to attract passers by to places over on the next block.  For instance, on one corner, a fellow dressed up as a dog wearing a banner that said Dog Cafe', and another block down, someone dressed up as a cat to advertise the Cat Cafe'.  Both of these are little coffee shops where you go and play with the actual animals while sipping your latte.  Someone else dressed up as food of some sort.  Anyway, the noodle restaurant was apparently very popular.  They ushered us upstairs to have a seat, and we were to look at the wall for the four options available for lunch, and then they collected the cash in advance.  We picked two of the options, so we could try each--a cold noodle and warm noodle dish.  In addition, the waitresses brought kimchi and vegetable side dishes to go with our soups.  And they brought refills of the kimchi, whenever it got low.  Then, when we finished, we hurried out in order to catch the bus for the changing of the guard.

Throne from museum can be found here in the original.

Family celebrating child's first birthday, so all dressed up in traditional Korean costume and went to the palace for a photo shoot.

However, even though we caught the bus, it was already too late for the changing of the guard, so we went straight to Changdeokgung Palace.

Then it was time to crowd on a train to go to Cheonang.