Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: (Still) Day One

Being in the air again so soon after leaving our first plane felt a bit odd, but KLM provided a pretty comfy ride,

complete with airline food that was a touch better than normal--the graphic design of the packaging was certainly pleasing!

(Look, it's our first sushi of the trip!)

This was our first time flying over Siberia, and every time I woke up and peered out the window, another who-knows-where-we-were settlement briefly lit up the view before fading to black.

Daylight allowed us to see winding rivers of snow and ice below,

which definitely contrasted with the views being presented on our food!

Although the eleven and a half hours we spent on our second plane was relatively comfortable, it was still too long to be in the air, and we both found that we were drinking so much liquid in order to avoid feeling annoyingly dry that our legs had started to swell. (We only realised this when we tried to put our shoes on at the end of the flight--I had a really difficult time zipping up my long boots!) Anyway, just when we thought we would go a bit crazy, Tokyo came into view and we got off plane number two:

With no luggage to claim, we went through immigration, checked in for our final flight of this very long leg, and went back through immigration--and we still had plenty of time before our Korean Airlines flight left for Seoul. We decided to pass the time doing something we've been desperately looking forward to doing for quite some time: eating excellent sushi! This being Japan, the airport sushi restaurant was classy, reasonably priced, and oh so melt-in-your-mouth fresh. Bob had a tekka don full of buttery tuna,

and I relished my chirashi sushi filled with its fantastic selection of toppings:

As we ate our delicious lunch and thought about what sushi of this quality would cost us in London, we were happy to have left that city behind . . . . Departure time came again, and we boarded our third plane of the (very long) day, keeping in mind that this flight would be a mere two and a half hours, and we landed in Incheon before much time seemed to have passed.

I've never been in Asia except in the months between May and August, when it's usually sweltering hot and even monsooning, so visiting in the wintertime was a definite novelty for me--in fact, as we walked through the airport and looked out at the hazy day,

I had to stop myself from thinking, "Ugh. It's going to be boiling when we get out there." In fact, weatherwise, this visit was easily the most comfortable of any of my trips to Korea or Japan. Asia in the winter: I highly recommend it! Now you'd think that after having left our London flat some twenty eight hours ago, our journey would be over, but we still had to get from Incheon Airport (northwest of Seoul) to my parents' place in Suji (in southern suburban Seoul). And who would be getting us there? Why, Bob, of course!

With my dad playing navigator, Bob got behind the wheel of my parents' new car and off we went -- which in Seoul traffic meant a lot of time looking at red brake lights on the slow-moving highways.

There were even people on the highway selling refreshments to people stuck in traffic--this particular vendor was selling hot donut-like pastries filled with sweet, mashed red bean (which just happens to be one of my favourite Korean sweets).

"How do they always know where the traffic jams will be?" my dad wondered. I guess in a country where a journey by car is almost never thought about in terms of time because of the severe traffic jams (journeys are talked about as being a certain distance--and I've found out the hard way that a 200-km trip can take anywhere from two to seven hours ON THE HIGHWAY, so talking in terms of time is rather useless), finding a traffic jam isn't exactly the most difficult task. Anyway, we passed on the roadside treats and saved our appetites for dinner in Suji--at the Suji "Restaurant Town," a large area filled with restaurants of many types, anchored by a large parking lot and a map to get you to the restaurant of your choice.

Bob's first Korean meal of the trip was one of his favourite dishes, and both he and my mom had bi bim neng myun, a spicy concoction of chilled buckwheat noodles, vegetables, a boiled egg, and a whole lot of go chu jang (hot red pepper paste) sauce. It's far too spicy for me (and my dad), but they love their spice!

We opted for bowls of completely non-spicy gal bi tang (short-rib soup), which are hearty bowls of soup filled with seasoned beef short ribs that you pull out of the soup and dip into little bowls of soy sauce before eating the yummy meat.

A typical Korean meal comes with many shared ban chan (side dishes), and here my dad's surveying the ban-chan land, deciding what to have next:

By the time we finished our supper, it was about 8:30 P.M., Seoul time, and we had no idea what time that meant for our extremely tired bodies, but we were already dreaming of our bedroom and sleep, glorious sleep, so we passed on the complimentary after-supper coffee and ice cream (Bob passing on ice cream really shows how tired he was),

enjoyed the view of Suji from the restaurant entrance,

drove back to my parents' place, and fell asleep almost immediately. "We made it!" Bob and I said to each other as we were falling asleep. Our long journey here was behind us, and tomorrow was a day with no planes, no changes in time zones, and, most excitingly, no plans! Zzzzzz . . .