After feeling a bit dodgy on Saturday morning and deciding not to go hiking with Emily, Kat and I decided we couldn’t spend all day sitting around the flat and headed to Seoul Tower.

Seoul Tower stands on the top of Mt Namsan and has spectacular views over the city. Our information said there was a cable car dock a 10 minute walk from the tube station, which seemed good as I was still feeling slightly delicate!

Coming out of the tube station we could already see the tower and headed off in its general direction in search of the cable car dock.

According the leaflet I picked up at the tower:

Seoul tower provides the city highest viewpoint. It was Korea first integrated communications tower, transmitting TV and FM radio signals for the metropolitan area since it was constructed in 1969. Nearly 48 per cent of the people in Korea benefit from its antenna for various local and nationwide FM and TV broadcasting services such as KBS, SBS, and MBC.

Since it was opened to the public in 1980 as a hybrid recreational / cultural complex the tower has become the symbol of Seoul and has played a role as the city’s most recognisable landmark and popular tourist attraction.

We climbed some steep side streets before seeing a couple head up some steps directly underneath the tower. We figured they were going the right way and followed them.

At the top of the steps we came to a road, the couple turned left and we followed them. We walked for a bit then realised it had already taken us much longer than 10 minutes and there was no sign of the cable car dock! However the road was heading up the mountain so we decided to keep going for a bit longer in the hope the cable car was around the next corner.

Another 20 minutes or so passed and there was still no sign of a cable car dock. Already having walked a fair distance and not knowing if we could find the steps back to the main road if we turned around we decided to keep going.

The road was still taking us up the mountain and we had found a series of maps beside the path with two points marked on, one appeared to be at the bottom of the path and the other at the top. We figured one point was the bottom of the mountain and the other was Seoul Tower, the maps were in Korean and we couldn’t actually read them, it was all guess work!

Still not entirely sure if we were heading in the right direction and taking frequent breaks to nurse my still delicate stomach we walked, and walked, and walked a bit more until eventually, after almost an hour, we came to some steps leading directly up the mountain. We walked up the steps until they came to a crossroad where some men were selling food. Confused we stopped and looked around. One of the food sellers shouted over: “Seoul tower?” And pointed up the steps beside us. Finally we knew we were going the right way. We just hoped it wasn’t much further.

We reached the top of the steps and realised we were at the entrance to the tower, just one more mega steep hill to climb before we could get inside and chill out.

Standing underneath the white of the tower against the black of the night sky looked amazing. But that was nothing compared to what we would see from the top.

Inside the tower there were two observation floors at the top. On the first floor, written on the windows, was where each window pointed to and how far away it was. Kat and I headed straight for the window with London marked on it and posed for some pictures.

The next floor had points around Seoul marked on the window and some information about each place. It was a great way to learn more about places we have visited and find some new places we want to visit.

And of course the views from the observation floors were spectacular. You could see the lights of Seoul stretching far into the distance.

But once you had walked a round a couple of times you had seen all there was to see and after about an hour we headed back down, being sure to note where the cable car dock was!

Early on in the evening that Kat and I had noticed that we were almost the only people at the tower who weren’t in a couple. There were couples everywhere taking pictures of themselves in front the observation windows, snuggling up in the chairs whilst waiting for the lift and keeping each other warm in the queues for tickets. Check out the picture below. At first glance it looks like any normal queue, but when you give it a second glance you realise that everyone is stood next to someone of the opposite sex!

After marveling at the fact we really were the only single people at Seoul Tower we squeezed ourselves into a cable car full of courting couples and headed home for a good nights sleep – alone!

* Posted by j150vsc on 22/11/2006.
* 1 comment