29th of October - 1st of November - Seoul pt. 1

The direct flight to Seoul went without any issues; meals, movie and naps are always a good combo. We arrived 20 minutes before plan but as our gate was still occupied we ended up being parked on the tarmac for almost half an hour. 

Immigration and picking up my bag went smooth and less than an hour after getting off the plane I was standing in the arrival hall. I picked up my SIM- and transport card and took a 1-hour ride with the subway to my hotel. Leaving the station I had found the exit that on the map looked like the closest one to the hotel but I was still preparing to have to walk around for a bit to find it. No worries, though, leaving the station the entrance to the hotel was literally less than 10 meters ahead from where I stepped off the escalator. As it at that point nearing 2200 there was nothing left to do than check in and pass out. 

View from my hotel room.

My first course of action the following day was to go to the Olympic Park 45 minutes (by subway) away to pick up my race pack for the run on Sunday. I found the conference room at the hotel as instructed which turned out to be a table outside said room with a couple of people taking runners' ID and then finding their pack in the room. It was very easy for the runners; quick in and out, no expo or fancy sponsor booths. The pack was a first: a box that you would usually see being used to ship stuff in, packed with things, most of what seemed very unnecessary (to a tourist, at least). Outside of the expected bib, bag drop bag and the included singlet (which I will not be wearing, and considering it's XXL it isn't very XXL) the pack included various energy gels, soft skittles, a skittles tote bag, laundry detergent, sport tape, soap/shampoo, ads (among other a voucher for car rental) and other - I assume sponsor - stuff that made you scratch your head. 

The Olympic Park. 

After taking what I wanted and leaving the rest in a bin I had a walk in the park which most of the time was more park and less Olympic. The stadiums lined the park's east side so unless you were there it was just like any other park. I'll admit that the stadiums didn't look as imposing as I had expected, but considering they had hosted the Olympics back in the 80s I guess things just weren't as big back then. Took the subway back to Seoul central and had a walk to Myeongdong where I spent a few hours walking around exploring and seeing all the food stalls getting set up for the night, had dinner and ended up back at the hotel at around 1900, calling it an early night. 

Sungnyemun Gate.

The following days I spent walking around my hotel's location and Seoul main train station to get my bearings and get a feel of the city. The public transport, the subway in particular, is extensive and when getting used to it easy to use to get almost anywhere in the city. It's fast and efficient, but I'm also starting to get the impression it's the only practical way of getting around. I like to just walk the streets with little plan, but while there are sidewalks in most places there doesn't seem to be much going on between areas around the subway stations. You go to a station to do something there, you don't really just wander around. Of course, my experience with Seoul is still quite limited and it likely just depends on gong the right places, but in that case I am still looking for those. As I currently don't have any activities specifically planned I will likely still have my walks around town, but I'll find out in the coming days if that is a useful tactic. 

 

Hallway at the War Memorial of Korea.

 

Keeping south of the north

There are plenty of places I haven’t been to yet it sometimes seems difficult to find somewhere to go on a vacation. The last year to Japan exceeded my expectation so feeling inspired I started looking for similar destinations. I my eyes fell on Korea. The southern variant, not the northern.

I had initially planned a trip but afterwards I realized that the weekend before arrival there would be a marathon in Seoul. I looked into it and suddenly I was the owner of a spot in the JTBC Seoul Marathon. Woops. I had my arrival flight moved and booked an extra hotel in the city.

28th of October – 6th of November

I’m flying out late on the 28th and arriving in the evening the next day, so I felt it would be important to find a hotel that was easily accessible from the airport. But due to the marathon going from west to east of the city I also wanted to find a hotel that had direct connections to both start and finish. To my relief it was actually possible to find such a hotel, sitting at a station near the central station. This means I will have more than 8 full days in Seoul by myself, exploring (eating), running and recovering and basically just relaxing and taking it all in.

 

7th – 10th of November

I’ll be joining the travel group in the afternoon and we’ll spend the first day in Seoul before travelling to Gyeongju by train, a city on the east coast. The city is the old capital of South Korea and we will be introduced to, among plenty other things, Bulguksa Temple, a UNESCO site.

 

11th – 13th of November

We will continue further south along the coast to Busan, passing though several small villages along the way. We will then return to Seoul to spend a day visiting the DMZ.

 

14th – 18th of November

From Seoul we will drive down though the western part of the country that apparently the greener part. We will spend nights in Jeonju and Yeosu before ending up on Jeju, a small island south of the mainland.

 

19th – 22nd of November

Final goodbye with the group before flying back to Seoul and spending 2 nights in the central part of the city to take in the last impressions before I head home after another – hopefully – lovely trip.

With Japan still in recent memory I am looking forward to see the similarities and differences compared to this trip. Looking at the itinerary it’s clear I will definitely have enough time in Seoul when there, but with all the spare time I have in the beginning I will have plenty of opportunity to do other stuff if I already start tiring of the city. I doubt, it though. We will see.

10th – 13th of October – Eindhoven

There were no flights directly to Eindhoven so instead I flew into Amsterdam and then took the train 1½ hours to Eindhoven with a change in Rotterdam. It made getting back and forth a bit more complicated but the trains were on time and it was a comfortable ride, so there was no issue. Arriving in Eindhoven it took less than 10 minutes to locate my hotel where I checked in and claiming my room that turned out to overlook the finishing area of the race, and soon after I left to go to the Technical University where I picked up my bib and shirt. As it was getting late and dark I wandered about for a bit and realized that the city seemed to enjoy Italian and Japanese food, so I ended up in a ramen place where I started off with some Takoyaki before having a delicious bowl of ramen. Not having any desserts (what?!) I left and had a quick visit to a kiosk to bring some back home to the hotel. You can’t have dinner without dessert when you’re on vacation!

 

A striking photo.

The next day I had a walk outside the center of the city and realized how correct it was when reading on travelling sites saying that Eindhoven isn’t really a tourist destination. I therefore returned to the center where I spent time visiting the DAF and Philips museum. The former had a bunch of vehicles presented from throughout the history of the company and while there was no real walkthrough of the history of the company itself the descriptive plaques for the vehicles combined gave a fairly good overview of the company, too. The Philips museum focused on the company’s foundation, the light bulb, the later years’ development of hospital technology and more recently the implementation of AI. The average consumer only see a fraction of what Philips do – and the home appliance divisions have mostly been sold off or split into other companies; focus now is health technology (ultrasound, respiratory care, radiography and lots of other fancy stuff). They have also helped found – among other things – ASML which is one of the world’s main suppliers to semiconductor industries around the world, supplying equipment for chip production. It’s some serious high-tech stuff, and together with numerous other high tech industries in the city it has made Eindhoven a major tech hubs in Europe.

One of the vehicles that participated in the Paris-Dakar rally. 

 

Derp. 

The starting area was only a 10 minute walk from the hotel, on the opposite side of the station, on Montgomerylaan. While the street was wide they only used on side for the runners which meant that the starting area was stretched quite a bit. But all was good and we were off on time – just before the starting line we were squeezed together to half width and while annoying and stopping the flow it meant that it helped spreading the runners over a larger distance, loosening up the group and not having a too crowded start. 

The course generally consisted of long stretches with not too many turns which meant it was easy to get into a zen mood without having to focus on constant making turns and positioning yourself optimally. It wasn’t until around 30km we started making more regular turns. Going north on Montgomerylaan we made our first turn down Winston Churchilllaan, circling around Luytelaer before returning west and going up along Henri Dunantpark. From here we headed west until we ran south down along the airport until reaching the High Tech Campus which we circled (the place seemed huge!) before taking a quick nip down into Voldijn before returning north and finishing in the city center, almost right outside my hotel.

The cheering was limited along the course, you met them in groups near stations and intersections, but getting back into the city the energy was high. Also, the last couple of hundred meters we merged with the half-marathon course which suddenly made otherwise nice conditions very cramped. It was manageable considering the relative short distance and you could distract yourself with the onlookers. Unfortunately I didn’t quite avoid the hand-on-shoulder push-you-aside runner a few meters before the finish line – hurray for you, you gained 3 seconds! (he turned out to be a double-dick as he was also the type that just completely stopped the second he crossed the line).

I managed to finish in 3:53:43, a very respectable time, my 4^th fastest marathon time. I came in as 2340 out of 4356 overall (top 53,72%), 2065 out of 3635 men (top 56,81%) and 331 out of 501 M40 (top 66,07%). A surprisingly fast group of runners I would have thought my relative result would have been better. I was a very flat course, though, with 48m up and a little less down over the entire course.

Getting back to the hotel was a completely different challenge, though. I could look right up at it but we got channeled past, split up in half and full runners, and we, the full marathoners had out exit in front of the station. Getting back to the hotel was wild. It was crowded getting out because of all the +1s waiting for runners, and then getting across 18 Septemberplein was nearly impossible as that was where the half marathoners exited, and that was a significantly bigger group of people with their +1s waiting. The down Hermanus Boexstraat which turned out to be the last stretch of the half marathon meaning the sidewalks were packed. It took me close to an hour walking the 1km back to the hotel. It was absolutely maddening.

Had a shower (it was a bathtub with a shower – it’s never fun getting into one of them after a run) before going out and had a pile of fries before settling in in my room and only moving again to go out for dinner.

The following day was spent in the hotel before leaving for the station and taking the trains back to Amsterdam and flying home.

Full album can be seen here.