War Memorial

War Memorial. When you see this associated with Korea, you invariably think of the still unresolved Korean War. However, this War Memorial Museum is both a memorial and a museum for all the various wars Korean has been involved in, from centuries before the Korean War to more modern operations.

Before I show the museum, let me take this time to introduce GiNi. She was the expert navigation system that guided us on our various outings this week.





GiNi steered us all around Seoul to our destinations with various chirps, beeps, messages (all in Korean of course) and error bells. She was so noisy that TSPs were reminded of a Casino! Actually, TSM is planning to buy her own USA-version of GiNi. Until you've driven around the crammed and unfamiliar streets of Seoul, you can't appreciate the joy of typing in your destination in Korean text while driving down the highway at 100 KPH! For all your help keeping us on tract, Thanks GiNi!

So, we arrive at the War Memorial and it is almost lunch time. Not seeing any lunch places on the streets nearby, we drive about 4 more blocks to Itaewon to search for yet another restaurant. TSF sees it, and insists that we eat at the Subway sandwich shop! I must say, this is one restaurant chain that is COMPLETELY like the original on America. Other than adding the Korean language to the menus, I didn't see any concessions to Korean tastes that I would see in other places.









Thus, with full bellies we drove back to the War Memorial Museum. Our timing was extremely lucky. According to their website, they have a miliary band and professional rifle and drill team performance once per week. We just happened to arrive exactly at the time the performance was getting underway!







A couple of things caught my attention, for example the multiple launch arrow system, and the cannon arrow(!)





All over the Museum there were these posters of Pinocchio. We never did figure out why.



Well, after touring the Museum we headed back to The Stumbling Apartment for a little rest. Then we joined my engineer friend JI, and one of his friends from his English Academy SH, for the evening. We started off planning to eat the Belly Pork dish that we missed last Friday night. I had another restaurant recommended to me, and we went there. Unfortunately, this place was pretty small and jam packed. There was a 30 minute wait, and we were hungry. So we went around the corner to another good place, Duck-Ori, which is a Duck restaurant.









There were many many courses of various duck meat. But the best was saved for last. Here is the duck pumpkin! They brought this to the table, and it looked like a whole pumpkin. Then she cut the sides and opened it up to reveal the baked duck meat inside. This was outstanding.



TSF caught the photogenic staff in various poses:





After dinner we stopped by Trevor and MY place, Beer O'Clock for a short time.



Finally, we adjourned to sing at a Karaoke place (Noraebang in Korea). TSP have been bugging me since their arrival to go there. Everyone except TSM sang songs, and as you can see below we had a great time. I think TSF wants to open a Noraebang back in the USA.