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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.

If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.

If you want to read about our elephant/beach experience in Thailand, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach/city experience in Australia, then click here.

If you want to read about our adventure/beach experience in New Zealand, then click here.

If you want to read about our under water adventure in the Maldives, then click here.

If you want to read about our Taj Mahal adventure in India, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in Hong Kong, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in China then click here.

The Journey Continues - Korea

Shanghai to Seoul

To jump directly to one of our days in Seoul, click here:

DAY 208

We got up and ate breakfast at the quick service restaurant and then were off to the airport. We had the hotel order us some taxis and while we waited, Megan brought Liam into a little play area in the lobby. The first taxi arrived, and I started to load up the stuff for me, Keira and Elenna and texted Megan to come out. The second taxi was in theory on the way, so we took off, since I felt bad having our driver wait around for the next taxi. Unfortunately, Megan’s taxi didn’t arrive for about 15 minutes, so we got to the airport way before they did. We looked at a luggage store for a new suitcase for Liam, since the wheel to his suitcase was ripped off on our flight from Cochin to Hong Kong. We had been lugging it around for the past few flights without the wheel which wasn’t ideal. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a suit case the same size.

Eventually we all arrived at the airport, and it turns out that the taxi drivers to the airport are much more sane than the drivers from the airport, and we had no complaints or near death experiences. We boarded the plane to go Korea (which I keep calling South Korea, but apparently its just the Republic of Korea), and again this was a thing where in theory I didn’t need to get a visa because we were US citizens, but we did have to fill out a paper form. When we got there, there were signs everywhere about filling out a E-pre arrival form, which sounded potentially different from a visa and left me worrying on the 10 minute line that we were doing something wrong by not having it, but we were fine.

Megan was having a hard time getting her Uber app to work, but then she said that she got it working so I ordered an Uber. But it turns out that her app wasn’t working and my Uber arrived and it still wasn’t working. So I had her, Keira and Lily go in a car together while the rest of us got into my Uber, figuring that between the three of them, one of them would get the app working - both Lily and Keira thought that theirs was working but then stopped trying when Megan said hers was working. So the three of us rushed off to get to our Uber. We got all loaded and as we pulled away, we saw the other three loading up into their car.

We were staying at a hanok, which is a traditional house in Seoul. Basically, it looks like any Japanese house you might have seen in a movie - with a courtyard in the middle, with a rock garden and couple of plants and the rooms arranged around it. Wooden beams, slanted roof. The key was that it was in the middle of the city, and although Uber had the place listed, it was hard to find, since it was down a couple of small side streets that cars really couldn’t go down. So even though we had a head start on the girls, it took us about 15 minutes to find the place once we got there. And we only did find it because the woman who drove the Uber was so nice and took a lot of time walking down side alleyways. Megan’s car had an equally hard time finding it, and I had to come out to get them. But once I found them and got us close to the house, I forgot which way to turn and had to yell out to Elenna to come get us. Luckily she did.

Once we found it, our place was pretty neat.

The place was really neat, but it was old and there was a warning that they don’t give refunds if its too cold. It said it had heaters and when we booked it the temperature was supposed to be in the 60s so we figured it was fine, but the night we got there it got into the low 30s. So we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to turn on the heaters, and it was a bit of a problem since the remotes were written in Korean. We eventually got it working between Keira randomly getting hers to work through trial and error and us contacting the host of the house and we had heat for the night. Megan had already begun forming a back up plan of going to a Marrioutt, but that would have been a shame.

The place was called the Chae Library, but the only books we found were a bunch of self help books. Megan read one about people who world schooled their kids. I read one about changing your mindset to unlock success.

"Library" might be a little stretch, but I guess that there were more books there than the average house rental.

We were all starving, so I looked on google maps and all of the closest restaurants to us were either Italian or Swiss. So we decided to have our first meal in Seoul be at an Italian restaurant since Liam and Keira would find something to eat. Unfortunately it was closed, so we walked around a little and walked into the next restaurant we found which it turned out only served fish. So it was a little awkward, but we got up and left after they brought us the menu. I saw another Italian restaurant down a side street, but after the first one was closed even though Google said it was open, I was a little scared to have us go off the beaten track to go there rather than continue walking to a main street that likely had more options, but we decided to go and the restaurant was great. Liam didn’t like the pizza, but everyone else loved what they ordered.

The next day was a lazy day where Lily was going to do homework and everyone else was going to rest. Megan and I planned to go to supermarket since we were trying to do a detox from all of the bad eating we had been doing over the past couple of weeks. We slept until 11:30am, and then Liam and I went to a bodega around the corner and got some random things (including Nutella which Liam had been missing for the past 2 weeks in India and the Disneys). But it didn’t sell fruit or meat so we still had to go to a supermarket later in the day.

When we got home, we realized that the noodles I had bought were super spicy, and the thing that looked like mac and cheese, wasn’t quite the instant stuff we were used to. But we all had something for lunch, if not our best meal ever.

We didn’t do much for the next few hours but read and then Megan and I were ready to go to the super market. The nearest one that we saw that looked “western” was 2 miles away, so we figured we would walk there and Uber back with the groceries. I asked if anyone wanted to join us, not expecting anyone to say yes, but Elenna agreed to come after complaining that she didn’t want me in charge of getting our food again.

We didn’t tell her it was a 2 mile walk away, and once she found that out (about 15 minutes into the walk), she wasn’t pleased. But she is easy going and didn’t hold it against us too much.

I can't pass up a potential photo.

The supermarket was huge and looked very western. It had some of the name brand cereals like Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops, but most of the things were in Korean. I think that the one universal food in every country so far has been oreos. Coke is everywhere, but not always Diet Coke and not always Coke Zero.

When we were done, we walked out to the street to order the Uber, but the app wasn’t finding anything, so we saw a bench next to a place that had a taxi sign on it, so we figured we would wait there and either Uber would come through or a taxi would show up. A taxi eventually picked us up, and he was having a little difficulty finding our place on his map, but then I showed him that we were near the palace, he figured it out and we were on our way. He missed the turn off into our little alleyway, but by now I knew how to get from the main street to our house and we just walked there.

Megan made dinner while I finished doing the laundry. The place wasn’t set up for cooking for 6 people - I think that there were only 3 large plates, but plenty of bowls and some medium and small plates so we made it work. But there were no knives beyond the cooking knives and there were no forks. There were chop sticks though, so we were able to eat everything pretty well except the salads were a little tricky. With Liam we just let him eat with his fingers and he was just as happy to do that.

After that, we decided to let Elenna choose an anime movie for us to watch. While she looked for one, we tried to watch a tour about the places in Seoul that were on the show XO Kitty, but the first clip we saw wasn’t great - it was cast members going around and eating food. And the second one was about a guy going around and seeing places from the show, but more than half of it was his commentary on the characters, rather than the sights.

Eventually, we got a movie going, but unfortunately, we couldn’t get the one Elenna wanted to play, so we chose one at random about a girl turning into a cat. It wasn’t very good, but it was good enough that I wanted to see how it ended, so although we said we would only watch 1 hour, we watched the whole thing. At the end, we decided that we really hadn’t learned much about Korea or Japan watching it, but it was a good bonding experience.

Day 210

Elenna had wanted to visit a cat cafe, so that was the main item on the agenda. But first, the girls were yearning for a Dunkin caramel macchiato, so when we passed a Dunkin on the day before, the breakfast plan was that Keira and Elenna would go there and get Dunkin around 10:30 as brunch, and then afterwards we would go to the cafe.

Lily had homework to do, and Keira hates animals, so the four of us walked over to the cafe. It was 1.5 miles away, but this time Elenna was forewarned about the walk and there was a cat cafe at the end, so there was no complaining.

Liam likes any place where there are arrows to where we are from.

The walk over was pleasant, and to a large degree Seoul is like any other nice large city, with lots of traffic, but wide streets, clean sidewalks, and lots of fountains, museums and such to see.

Not sure who this funny looking character is. But he is standing next to that pink Haechi statue (a divine mythical beast known for its ability to see good and evil).

There were also plenty of shops and restaurants to enjoy. Then we turned into the area where the cafe was, and it was more pedestrian with more narrow streets and more bustling shops. I really enjoy these areas with crowds.

I feel like Roof Cat Me would do well in NYC.

The cat cafe was actually really nice. It was quite clean, and spacious. There were 21 cats in attendance, but there were name places for 28, so maybe they rotated 7 out. To go in, we had to put our stuff into a locker and then take off our shoes and put on plastic sandals. We also had to wash our hands before going in.

Elenna was excited to be at the cafe.

There were cats everywhere, and for the most part, they accepted being pet, but none of them actively sought it out. We were a little spoiled by having Tazzy, who acted more like a dog than a cat and would seek you out and sit on your lap, so I wasn’t quite ready to seek out the cats. Liam had a great time going around and trying to get the cats to play with him. Elenna said that she really enjoyed it, and although she pet a number of cats, she didn’t really seek them out the way Liam did.

There were plenty of cats for everyone.

There were free drinks in the cafe and a neat machine that would make them. It was kind of like a Coca Cola Freestyle, but for teas and macchiatos. They served a strawberry macchiato that Liam and Elenna drank, and I did a lemon tea that tasted a bit like crystal light lemonade. But it was automated and you put in your order, then it gave you the right cup, then you filled it with ice (it filled it in automatically to the right height) and then it poured the drink to the right mixture.

We spent a couple of hours there, and at one point, they rang a bell to indicate feeding time, and all of the cats ran over the to their own specific cubby to get food. It was pretty cute.

Cats hanging out in and near their cubbies.

We weren't quite on the roof of the building but there was a good view of the street.

A pretty neat place, even if we didn't get on the roof.

After the cafe, we started to walk home but did a little shopping. Elenna wanted to go to Seoul largely due to her interest (or at least her friends’ interest) in K-Pop, so we bought some things about the boy bands from the area (largely BTS - I’l let you google them grandma, but they are the most famous band in the world).

Who wouldn't want a boy band on their feet?

We also found a suitcase that looked like it might be a replacement for Liams’ broken suitcase and we had a decision between a cheaper light weight one and a more expensive, but more durable looking one, and chose the cheaper one, a decision I fear that we may regret. But since we had the suitcase, we decided to Uber back instead of walking.

The plan was to go to Bukchon, a Hanok village (essentially a village of houses that all looked like where we were staying), but Liam was falling asleep in the car and said he wanted to take a nap. I wanted to walk around and get something to eat (Megan’s plan to eat healthy always left me feeling hungry) so I walked around and bought a cinnamon sugar mochi donut ball type thing and played a little Pokemon.

I came back and it turned out that when we were ready to leave, the village was about to close (we didn’t realize that a village could close to tourists, but apparently it does around 5pm, so our plan to go there and get some dinner was dashed. We did walk to a cosmetic store for Keira and Elenna, but ultimately, we decided to go out to a Korean BBQ. I found one on-line and we Ubered there but what was supposed to be a 5 minute ride, turned into a 25 minute ride. Once again, my Uber was working better than anyone elses, so Liam, Elenna and I got there about 10 minutes before the others did. This was good because our driver dropped us off a few blocks from where the restaurant was. For some reason, Google Maps won’t show walking or driving directions, only public transportation directions, so we need to use Apple Maps to go places. But when you google a location, the default is Google maps, and that creates a weird dynamic when you take the address from one app and put it into the other. So it took a few minutes to find the actual place but we found it. We believe that the satellite map issue is something caused by North Korea, who apparently shoots down satellites if they get too close.

We got a table for 6 and the others arrived. Keira was immediately upset that there wasn’t much for her or Liam to eat, but I thought that was pretty clear based on the BBQ part of the restaurant. But there was rice and ramen, so they had plenty to eat. One of my college roommates is Korean, and when his parents visited, they took us to a Korean BBQ in DC, so I knew that we were supposed to cook our own meat, but it was a bit more complicated with us having to go get the ingredients we wanted and cook it ourselves. The waiters spoke reasonably good English and took pity on us, and brought over a bunch of sides and showed us how to use some of the spices and vegetables. It was quite tasty.

Korean BBQ was fun once we got the hang of it.

Lily had a Spanish class that night, but we had 70 minutes until it started, so we decided to walk home - it was supposed to be 30 minutes, and an Uber could easily take that long. We stopped along the way at a store that was essentially a bunch of photo booths, because one option was to turn us into anime characters. I looked pretty good, if I do say so myself, but the computer seemed to think that Megan was a boy and Liam was a girl.

I wish my hairline was always in anime.

Then we passed a cart selling Tanghulu, or fruit on a stick, covered in caramelized sugar. I thought that it was just ok, but the others (except Liam) like it. I ended up buying Liam an oreo churro sundae because it was a churro. Then we walked home, and since it was hard to eat his ice cream and walk, I ended up carrying it in the cold, and then ditching it halfway back - but Liam was content with the oreos and the oreo churro.

Everything tastes better on a stick.

On the way back, we got a picture in front of the palace that was a block away from our place.

I love this type of architecture.

DAY 211

One of the things that the girls wanted to do while in Korea was to go get a color consult - basically go to a woman who would tell you what color makeup to get, what color clothes to wear, what hair color and eye color you should have, etc. We weren’t quite sure what Liam and I should do while this was going on, so when he was having a hard time getting up, the girls went ahead and we took our time getting ready.

Eventually we had breakfast and headed over there, and this was the first time that we were faced with bad Seoul traffic. It took about 15 minute longer than it said it would to get there, but since we weren’t in a rush, we didn’t really mind. We said hi to the girls, but they weren’t ready, so we walked around a little and went into a cafe to have some more food.

Looks like we missed a lot of excitement.

Essentially, the girls all found out that they color clothes they like to wear are all wrong and that they should be wearing bright colors and pastels, not dark blues and greens. I kind of have a hard time getting my head around where fashion and science are supposed to intersect, but they all enjoyed themselves.

When the girls were done, we went The Original Pancake House (which despite its name, was not the original one, there were several in Korea), mostly because it was next door to the place and we were hungry. The pancakes were quite good, and I got an apple pie pancake that was terrific.

A well balanced lunch.

Then we had a K-Pop dance class (Korean Pop music). We got there about an hour before hand and walked around aimlessly for a little, before deciding it was too cold and we sat in the dance class waiting room for 30 minutes. As we sat there, we watched edits of other groups dancing. I quickly found the overweight guy who was 3 beats behind and decided that was probably what I was going to look like.

Our instructor was in her late 20s, and seemed like she was from somewhere in Europe, but spoke very good English. She was great and did all the moves in such a fluid and graceful way, you immediately think, “Oh, that looked easy, I can do that.” And then very quickly you realize that your body can’t even remotely do that. My knee was in a lot of pain about 15 minutes in, and I basically decided that I wasn’t going to bend them much, which made it easier to keep to the beat and get through the session.

We had about 60 minutes to learn about 40 seconds of choreography, and we probably needed about 200 minutes more (and I probably needed a time machine). But it was a lot of fun, and we left with a lot of respect for back up dancers. Not surprisingly, Keira and the girls got the hang of it much better. Unfortunately, none of my kids are self confident enough to let any video of them dancing appear on the internet. But if you want to see, you can message me.

After that, we went to the Starfield Library, which was a neat library inside of a mall.

A pretty neat. oncept to have a library in a mall. I'm not sure if people actually use it as a library, or how you get the books at the top.

We went mostly to look around, but Lily had to buy shoes and wanted some pants, so she and Megan went shopping while the rest of us went home. The taxi should have taken 20 minutes or so, but took about 70 minutes because of the traffic. Everyone fell asleep, but I felt like I had to stay awake, since I was in the front, so I only slept a few minutes.

I have a lot of pictures like this from our trip.

Elenna wanted makeup, and was adamant that she knew what she wanted and didn’t need Megan or Keira’s help, so I went with her to the cosmetic store. She did need help, in large part because she doesn’t speak Korean. She doesn’t like talking to strangers, but I made her, so she stepped up and got everything that she needed (or that the color consultant said that she needed). I initially liked the fact that the consultant didn’t try to sell you the cosmetics there, but then when I had to go out with Elenna after a long day, I kind of wish that they had sold it.

Keira and I cooked dinner and Megan and Lily got home just in time to eat. We were going to get up early for a tour to the DMZ, so we went to bed after that. But Megan and I first spent an hour or so trying to figure out what medicines we can take into Japan, who has crazy restrictions. Unfortunately, they are also somewhat vague about what exactly is prohibited, so we’ll see how it goes.

DAY 212

I got up a little before 6 so we could leave by 6:30 and get to our DMZ tour on time. With traffic being so bad, we had no idea if the 9 minute cab ride might be 30 minutes. Compounding things, Korea is going through a bit of political turmoil, with its President instituting marshal law, and then getting removed and the impeachment is set for tomorrow. There have been protests for the past couple of days at the royal palace (which is now just a tourist site) and our location, which is next to the palace, has turned from a great location, to a bit of a problem.

One of the few benefits of getting up early is that you see the sunrise.

We got to the location 10 minutes before the appointed time and boarded our bus. The first stop on the tour was actually a suspension bridge. I was proud of Lily for walking across it, although Elenna declined to go on it and shot me an accusing look when she first heard that it was on the itinerary.

The bridge was pretty bouncy, but Lily took it in stride. Get it?

For some reason, along the hike up to the bridge, there were ceramic animals in weird poses along the trail.

Weird ceramic squirrels in the background. Random, but did break up the walk a bit.

After that, we headed to a war memorial, with a section dedicated to the US - 14 UN countries fought along with South Korea in the Korean war. The tour was good because I only had a vague understanding of what happened and why. One of the best places was the mail box - we got a free post card and put into the mailbox, and it will be delivered in 1 year.

I'm always on the lookout for mail boxes.

Then we passed into the Demilitarized Zone and a soldier boarded the bus and looked at our passports before we could go through. It was a very cursory inspection, he seemed more worried about how many people were on the bus than who was on the bus. There was a viewing area where you could look into North Korea and see their 3rd largest city. The tour guide noted that we had a great day for looking since its usually cloudy. From that distance, the city looked like a normal city. And the radio jamming towers looked like normal jamming towers. But they wouldn’t let us take any pictures.

This is as close as we could be and take pictures - this is actually of the old viewing area, not the area we watched from.

The next stop was an underground tunnel. Apparently, North Korea had dug at least 4 tunnels in preparation for a surprise attack on South Korea. These tunnels were discovered in the 1970s. Since then, North Korea has been provoking South Korea in all sorts of ways, most recently by putting a bunch of garbage into balloons and sending it to South Korea. In return, South Korea blasts music, including K-Pop on speakers into North Korea, where it is illegal to listen to (apparently, 13 college students in North Korea were executed for watching Korean dramas, since all South Korea culture is banned). Its a sad state of affairs.

Then we watched a video about the DMZ, and it talked about how bad North Korea was, how they made statues in honor of their leaders even though their citizens were starving. It also talked about how they wanted reunification with North Korea, but until then, the DMZ is a great thing. Afterwards, we all commented how North Korea is known for its propaganda, but I guess there is a good dose of that in Western countries too.

Then we got to go down in the third tunnel that was discovered (again, no pictures). It was 370 meters underground, and the walk down wasn’t too bad, but by the time we climbed down and walked to the end of the tunnel, I was feeling a bit winded. As we went down, there were plenty of people going up breathing hard - including younger people. So as we went back up and we did it without stopping, I was proud of us all.

The actual cave at the bottom was only 1.5 meters high, so I had to duck about 2 feet for the whole time we walked. There wasn’t a whole lot to see at the end - they let us get about 260 meters away from the border to North Korea before they had us turn around. But still interesting to do.

These picture spots were about 400 meters away from the actual line between North and South.

After that we went to the Unification Village for lunch. This is a town of about 400 people who farm on the land in the DMZ. They are mostly retired military who are ready to fight in case of a North Korea invasion.

We haven't found a cut out where we didn't try to put Liam.

We got home around 3:30 and walked back to our house. Our plan had been to go to Gyeongbokgung Palace the next day and get a photographer to take our pictures while we were dressed up in historical Korean clothes. Out kids’ initial reaction to this was that doing this would be cultural appropriation, but then we pointed out that the city seems to be encouraging this - they give free admission to the museum if you are wearing a hanbok outfit, and since our lodging is right next to the palace, we have seen a bunch of people, including white people, wearing the clothes. We finally got them on board and were going to go on Tuesday, only to find that it was closed on Tuesdays. So we were going to go on Friday, but apparently the palace is going to be closed, in anticipation of protests around whatever the outcome will be with the presidential impeachment.

Other tourists in the background dressed in the traditional dress.

Because of this, we decided to go to the palace when we got back from the tour. The kids were tired and against the idea (but they are generally against seeing palaces or anything old), and Megan spent a little while trying to see if we can get pictures taken there or at a hanok village (basically a village made up of the type of houses where we are staying), but that village is also supposed to be closed. So we walked around for a little while, and I loved it, but the kids were dragging, so we just sent them all home to avoid hearing their complaining.

Walking around the palace was fun once we got rid of the kids.

Megan and I walked around for another 30 minutes. The palace is much bigger than we thought it was going to be with a pond inside. I love old architecture and pagoda style roofing is neat to see at that scale. The palace was built in 1375, but has been expanded, and burned and rebuilt so many times that it isn’t clear if anything is original. But the contrast of the ancient architecture with the sky scrapers around the palace walls was just so neat.

We went home and Megan cooked dinner and we generally relaxed for the night.

Day 213

Despite the protests and the fact that the castle was closed all day, we decided to go ahead and book the photo shoot anyway. So we got up early and got ready and walked over the to the hanbok rental place. Everyone picked out outfits, and in general I’d have to say that the women’s outfits were much cuter than the men’s outfits.

Liam rocked his outfit.

But the girls all love getting dressed up. Liam originally was steadfastly against doing it, but we eventually cajoled/threatened/convinced him and he ultimately did a great job taking direction for the pictures.

I was wearing shoes that were a little big for my feet, so I ended up taking them off whenever we had to walk a far distance and just walking in my socks. I realized that this must be how Megan feels when she wears shoes that she thinks are cute but are uncomfortable, and then doesn't realize that we are going to be walking through the city. Although we couldn’t go into the palace (Megan and I saw that the day before there would have been dozens of good photo spots in the palace), we were able to find a bunch of great places for pictures.

Liam practicing karate, getting ready for our Okinawa trip.

Towards the end of the photo shoot, we heard a bunch of cheering, and it sounded like there was a resolution on the impeachment - in favor of impeachment. As we walked back to the photo shoot place to change back into our clothes, we had walk all around these blockades to get to it, given the protests. There were all sorts of buses lined up on the streets blocking streets and there were a lot of policemen with riot gear. So it was a bit offputting, since we didn't know which verdict would be more likely to result in a riot.

But as we walked back from the photoplace to our lodging, we had to walk around the gates of the palace right in the middle of a parade and rally.

We walked around the corner and ran into this.

Since it went in favor of impeachment, it was all a happy rally, so we saw the police all packing up their riot gear. We walked up to the sidewalk to watch the parade for a little. People kept coming up to us ( I guess we stood out) and asked where we were from. One guy said, “Oh, America and South Korea share the same blood. We both want Democracy!” I couldn’t help but wondering if we would be attending another rally in the US some time soon.

A pretty peaceful demonstration.

People started handing us pins and posters saying that the president needed to be impeached, so eventually we just walked with the parade towards our home. People came up and thanked us for coming. It was all a bit surreal.

It was neat to see history in real life.

The plan was to take a brief pitstop at our room because we were set to meet our friend from Georgetown (who was teaching in Korea) and her family. But the parade slowed us down and joining the parade slowed us down even further. Lily hates being late for things (and I do too), but I was able to take a deep breath and realize that we were literally watching history, and should enjoy the. moment instead of worrying about the next moment.

Pretty neat to be in the midst of this.

We tried to meet our friends the day before at our KPop dance lesson, but the timing didn’t work. So we met up with them for lunch at a Harry Potter cafe. The theming was pretty good, although the food was somewhat subpar.

Once we got past the dragon, the cafe was much less dangerous.

Then we went to a store where you can make your own perfume by mixing a bunch of scents. Liam and I were a team and made a great perfume. Everyone had a great time, and the kids all really enjoyed Seoul, noting that they did a lot of girly stuff (Kpop, color consultation, perfume making, etc). They even said that they enjoyed the trip to the DMZ (at least more than they thought that they would).

I'm sure we are all going to smell fantastic.

Elenna had left her phone at the hanbok place, so she and I went there to pick it up, while everyone else went home. Then, since Elenna had gotten the wrong foundation when I took her last time, we went to the cosmetic store again to get the right one. Then we all went home and packed because we had to leave by 5:15am to catch our flight.