We made it! After an uneventful 10-hour flight from Honolulu, during which the classy flight attendants of Korean Air made sure we never went hungry, we arrived in Seoul. Naturally, the kids only fell asleep the last hour of the flight, so most of my memories of Incheon airport include an exhausted and grumpy little boy yelling at us and any passersby about how much he hates airplanes and travelling and bathrooms and Korea and pretty much anything else that is not his bed. On the plus side, immigration was completely empty by the time we coaxed Mr Grumpypants down the corridor. (Side note: I tell you what, Korean people know how to disembark an airplane. And a 747, no less.)
It was cold and foggy as we made the drive into downtown Seoul. It was a long-ish drive, but city planners apparently have a thing for fancy bridges, so there were plenty of interesting sights to see en route. Our hotel is one of the swankiest I’ve ever been in – not so much for the facilities as for the service. Lots of help, lots of helpers, lots of suits and ties and bowing. Our room looks out over the city, with at least a half-dozen mega-TV advertising screens, drivers who take lane lines as a suggestion, and one surprisingly loud whistle blowing traffic cop in view. The hotel definitely caters to the business class, I surmise from the shoe shine box, nespresso machine, and full sized bottle of cognac in the mini bar. Think glass-and-marble-bathroom. It’s kind of a strange place to watch two young kids yell, “Pooooooooop!” in each other’s faces and collapse in giggles.
Speaking of poop, another side note: Koreans are right up there with the Japanese when it comes to butt hygiene. The bidet in our bathroom does nearly everything for you. It warms the seat, warms the water, gently sprays the necessary places, dries the necessary places, turns on a charcoal air filter when things get a little stinky, and I’m pretty sure I saw “massage” and “sanitize” features, as well, but I’m already impressed with just the three buttons I’ve pushed so far. Aaron put a bidet on our toilet back home, but it was pretty cheap. It’s not so much a You Will Secretly Smile When You Walk Down the Street bidet, and more like Ice Cold Fire Hose Surprise bidet. I’m fairly certain we’ll be upgrading when we return.
Because of jet lag, the kids were wide awake at 4 am this morning. I didn’t plan on doing much today, but we wound up walking around quite a bit. My kids have some kind of Contrarian Mode switch that makes them get all hyped up when we’re in the hotel room, but whine about their shoes and being tired as soon as we go out. A brief stop for bubble tea helped the situation a bit, but a large grassy field helped even more (apparently, running in circles turns the switch off). Immediately next to our hotel is a large underground tunnel, originally built as a bunker (and probably still useful as such), but today a kind of shopping mall. Dozens of tiny mom-and-pop shops sell everything from prescription glasses to slippers to tobacco to wall art. Prices seem reasonable, I suppose, but our perspective could have been altered after visiting the Lotte mall direcly above it, where kid pants are $100 and an apple is $10. I’m curious who pays this. Chinese tourists? I hear that’s a thing.
