LIFE ON 'THE PENN': N Seoul Tower

The major landmark of Seoul, N Seoul Tower. No, the 'N' does not stand for north. It is pronounced in Korean "en Seoul towa". Why the 'N'? Perhaps because it is located on Namsan mountain, although of course they have a different alphabet than us. Who knows. Regardless of the name, the tower can be seen from just about anywhere in Seoul, except maybe the outlying areas. We have quite a good view of it from our house and found our house easily from the observatory. It is not really that tall, 777 feet (compare to Washington Monument at 555 feet or the Empire State Building at 1250 feet), but being on the mountain top gives it quite a boost.

In the very center of this picture you can see the "Blue House" nestled against the mountain side, which, as you can guess, has the same purpose as the American White House. Notice how rocky the mountains are.

The Hangang, or Han River.

You can see our house! Red roofs on left, near the big rectangular bluish building.

Only foreigners can drive, or taxi as we did, to the parking lot at the top, some sort of goodwill tourist policy, which our taxi driver told us Koreans complain about. Can't say I blame them. The path is very shady, but also very steep. You can see (highly repaired) parts of the Seoul Fortress Wall along the way.

As you can tell from the pictures, Seoul is surrounded by mountains and crossed by the Han river. This makes it a good location for a capital city, especially in ye olden times, which we learned from our visit to the Teddy Bear museum at the base of the tower. A wonderfully cute, very basic overview history museum, with depictions of life using teddy bears. In each set-up, some of the bears move, and they have music/sound effects also. Fun for kids, informative history for foreigners! It was great because with as much history as Korea has, a history museum here can be quite overwhelming for someone ignorant of all things historically Korean. I don't understand all the dynasties and kingdom eras and etc they refer to at most museums and get brain block and don't want to look at anything else! This was super cute and fun!