Thinking Allowed: Rap not Seoul

Seoul was a bonus destination on our trip. It was cheapest to fly through Seoul to get to Harbin (China) and while we were flying through Seoul we arranged to have a few days to explore. Except our plans had to change so our layover in Seoul became more of a destination and our few days turned into a week. We didn't know what to expect of Seoul but Jakob was excited to get to use his few Korean words and to finally visit the birthplace of tae kwon do. I suppose we envisioned days of visiting palaces and dojos only taking breaks to wolf down some bimbimbap. What we didn't envision is the week long cafe crawl our time in Seoul turned into. It wasn't all cafes - we did wind our way through old parts of town, Tova adored the palace we visited (though mainly because there was a lot of room to run), Zadie climbed up her first very long staircase (up the mountain to the Seoul tower), I had a nice veggie bibimbap and Jakob had a more authentic version (though he wasn't brave enough to try the version involving live fish). But really South Korea is much more modern than all that and we also spend endless minutes watching youth dance k pop on the street, eating croissants to the background of American rap, walking through urban linear parks, playing in the snow, window shopping (well more like window gawking), bouldering, a couple of children's museums, and watching Nanta (a non verbal cooking play involving drumming, martial arts, singing, cooking and a lot of cabbage. There was a lot more American culture influence than I expected but I am not complaining about the South Korean love of cute cafe and bread - really good bread too. It has been a fun week.