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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Seoul: Day 1 - Getting There

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We took our first (hopefully of many) vacations here in Asia. October 1st is National Day in China and to celebrate J's office was closed from Oct. 1st to Oct. 7th.  We took advantage of the time off and headed to Seoul, South Korea.

Our first day was a Very.Long.Day! We left our apartment at 9:30am and we got to our hotel at about 1:30am. We were thinking that the airport was going to be busy because of the Chinese holiday, we were wrong. We had plenty of time to get some thing to eat and relax a little before our flight to Qingdao, China where we had a three hour layover. Our next flight was a quick one and got us to Incheon Airport around 9:30pm.

After waiting in the long customs lines and then getting our bags we got to our bus stop a little before the last bus left the airport at 11:00pm.  The hotel website had instructions of which exit to take to get to the correct bus stop for our hotel. The ride from Incheon to Seoul took about 45 minutes. We arrived at the hotel and tried checking in, but it turned out that our reservation was at a different location! We were at the Novotel Ambassador in the Gangnam neighborhood, but we were supposed to be in the Doksan neighborhood! Ick! I was very upset with myself for not checking the itinerary closer, it didn't help that it was past midnight and I had a cranky six month old. It was the first time I had booked a flight/hotel combo through Expedia. (I don't know that I will do it again.) The Gangnam hotel helped us get a taxi, which took about 30 minutes to arrive then we had to drive to the other side of town! We didn't get checked in to the correct hotel until about 1:30 am.  Baby O had a quick diaper change, a bottle and then it was finally bedtime for everyone.

Before leaving for Seoul I got a tip from a friend that we should stop at the Olleh counter in the airport.  This was a great idea!  We picked up an Olleh wireless router that we used throughout our trip. It worked out to be approximately $8.50/day and it was worth every penny. There were many counters, although not a lot of the counters were open past 10pm. It is important to remember which counter you rented the router from as you will need to return it to the same counter.

I will be breaking up our trip by day so each post isn't overwhelmingly long. Also, I promise there are more pictures in your future!

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