After the park the club headed back to the hotel but I decided to stay out, have a wander around Seoul and take some photos. I knew that the walk from Lotte World to the hotel would pass by the Olympic Stadium so I decided to check that out.
A history of Olympic mascots commemorated in statues along the main Olympic boulevard, although I only found three, which were close to each other.
The 88 Olympics were held in Seoul and this tiger mascot was called George
The 92 Olympics were held in Barcelona and this cat's mascot was called Clive.
The 96 Olympics were held in Atlanta and this mascot with cannons for eyes was called Barry.
(actually they're called Hodori (Seoul), Cobi (Barcelona) & Izzy (Atlanta)
A random arrangement of Olympic rings en route to the stadium.
No idea who this is. I'm guessing some famous Korean athlete of years gone by.
This mural remembers two Olympic events that no longer take place, although I personally think they should come back. The guy in the background is Korean head-slapping champion Kim On Ken and the guy in the foreground is Sila Amkari who had dominated the sport of hair-pulling for 3 successive Olympics in the early 80s. It looks like Mankini's were popular here before Borat made them so in the West.
and here is the Olympic stadium, which I eventually stumbled upon. It's a real shame that the stadium isn't lit up at night. It did mean however that I was able to get this quite odd shot of it by putting a 20 second exposure on the camera. A conveniently placed traffic cone made a great tripod; Macgyver would have been proud of my improvisation.
A not so great one of one of the other stadiums close by, which I believe was now a baseball ground for one of the local teams.
Another long exposure shot of the main stadium with ribbon-twirling hat-wearing Tony the Tiger. Great!
The Olympic coach park giving the false impression that there must have been some major event taking place. As it turns out there was nothing going on at all bar some junior athletes doing some training. I think the coaches were just parked here en masse away from the narrow streets elsewhere.
The entrance to the Bonguensa Buddhist temple, which I found quite by accident after eating some chicken skewers from a street vendor (well it I think it was chicken). It was across the road from the Coex Intercontinental hotel, which came to my rescue. The shrine is famous for being haunted, the ghosts of past visitors making frequent trips in the dead-of-night going to pray to the Gods. I think I got lucky and snapped one, or it might just have been my long-exposure again.
A little over-exposed but a magnificient statue at the back-end of the shrine. The photo doesn't do the scale of the statue any justice whatsover but it is extremely tall.
..and at this point my second big camera battery ran out, the previous one having run out earlier in the day. You can call me ill-prepared but I did have a little ixus camera in reserve.
Wandering way off-track now. I knew I needed to be heading North-West and this street of neon was taking me South. So be it, who knows where I'd end up. Surely that's part of the fun in visiting new places?
Actually it soon started to get a little seedy so I was soon heading back on track.
A really cool lit building in what was clearly the posh shop district of Seoul. I really didn't blend in in this area at all and was soon on my way.
Cute cartoon apologising for some construction work that was taking place on the bridge I had to cross. This cutifying of bad messages is quite popular in Japan too and I really like it.
Here I am leaving the southern half of Seoul, crossing over the river towards the hotel. What I hadn't appreciated is that having crossed the river the expressway I was walking alongside would turn away in the opposite direction to where I wanted to be headed. Not ideal.
A rather interesting poster advertising Whisky :)
As it happens not only was I not going the right way, the jet lag was also starting to kick in. I was also rather stubbornly refusing to jump a taxi or the metro to get me home, the rationale being that I wouldn't really appreciate the city in doing so. But in walking I soon became appreciative of the hills that litter Seoul, some were extremely steep and I did definitely appreciate the need to not walk too close to local drunks who were testing their martial arts by kicking trees down.
The upshot is that I eventually got home after 1am completely wrecked having walked in the region of 8 miles, ah well!
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