We departed for the UK in December 2015 in order to spend Christmas with Dad. Seasoned travellers that we are, we booked an overnight in Inchon on the way there and on the way back in order to break up the flight.
The night on the way out didn’t afford us much opportunity to explore. The first evening we walked around a small airport suburb where the hotel was but it was cold and storming and while the neon was pretty neither of us were very keen to stay out of the hotel for very long. The next morning we ventured out for an hour again and while it was sunny enough, it was bloody cold (like -12 cold) so we didn’t wander far before heading back to the airport.
Handy travel tip if you have to spend time in Inchon airport – the majority of places to eat are actually in the bit of the airport before you go through customs.
Other than that, the flight was uneventful and we made it to our Tune Hotel in Paddington on Tuesday night not too much the worse-for-wear.
We spent a day or two recovering from our trip (and saw the excellent Rembrandt exhibition at the National) before heading down to Cornwall. London at Christmas is quite an exciting place to be – we look forward to spending more time there again soon.
Cornwall (or “home” as I like to call it) was suitably wintry. We had a successful Christmas, spent lots of time with Dad, saw some frosts and caught up briefly with the Turners and Simon. We also somehow spent an inordinate amount of time in ASDA.
The trip home was a bit more adventurous. We had a more time in South Korea this time around (just over a day) so took advantage of the really excellent free tours from Inchon airport.
It’s easy to get confused by the different brochures and names that seem to cover the transit tours, but basically there is only one transit tour company and they are free. We’d recommend booking beforehand, however we walked up on the morning and took two tours neatly killing six hours between them. The tour company made sure we didn’t miss our flights and were extremely well organised once you found them.
We visited a local temple for an hour (well, 20 minutes with travel) – it was not spectacular but was interesting (and it was nice to see another slice of South Korean life). We then found ourselves bustled onto the worryingly titled “5 hour Seoul Shopping Tour” which was frankly amazing. The coach ride into Seoul was fascinating – just watching the quite alien landscape go by. We spent an hour or so at the Namsangol Hanok Village – an outdoor museum where you can experience “a wide cross-section of Joseon-era citizenry and activities, from royalty to commoners”. Then finally we headed into Myeong-dong an insanely populated and otherworldly (to our western senses) shopping district.
We got back to the airport tired and in time for a sandwich and a coffee before the flight back to Brisbane.
It was, in short, an extremely successful few weeks.
The Obligatory Blog 