on sunday, april 16th, it was a nice, sunny morning that made it feel like spring was on the way. it hadn't really warmed up enough for spring, but it definitely felt like winter was over. around 10:30a i set off for 여�� (yeouido), a large island in the han river where there apparently were a lot of cherry blossom trees. most of the blossoms were passing their prime, so it felt like my last good chance to see them.

i walked down towards the sinchon rotary, a large five-way intersection right by my apartment. my plan was to take a bus to yeouido, earlier i'd researched the route online. i have a card that i use to ride the subway and bus here in seoul, you put money on it periodically and as you ride it deducts the fare each time from the card. i needed to put more money on the card, and i didn't have any cash so i stopped by at my local atm. only there wasn't any atm there. where my atm had been just days before was now a discount underwear shop. recently my bank got bought out by another bank (yes that same thing happens here as well as in the states) so i guess they didn't need that one anymore. unfortunately the atm for the new bank in the subway station was being difficult and not giving money out so i was kind of stuck. so i went to plan b and decided to walk to yeouido, which i figured might take around 45 minutes.

that tall building there on the right as you'll see is a mcdonald's. it's right next to the subway exits, so it's the most popular landmark for meeting friends in this area. on weekends you'll see around fifty or more people milling about, checking their cell phones and waiting for people they're meeting.

so i started down the street that leads south from sinchon rotary and before long i passed 서강대학� (sogang university), which just so happens to be the university that hosts excellent online korean lessons that i study when i'm not being lazy which is almost never. as i walked on, there wasn't much to see, but it was cool to check out another part of seoul.

finally i came to a larger branch of my new bank and the atm there decided to let me have my money that's mine to begin with. i was close to a subway station and decided to ride to yeouido that way. it's a good thing i made that choice because later i realized that i was actually not really heading in the right direction.

finally i got to yeouido and there were quite a lot of people there for what i realized was the last day of their official cherry blossom festival.

that's 번�기 (beondaegi), silk worm larvae. that's probably the one korean food i'm not jumping at trying. it doesn't smell very good and i'm not a big fan of bugs or those kinds of things. i've made it my policy that if someone offers it to me, i'll try it but i'm not seeking it out. i guess before the year is out i should just try it. i like everything else so i'll probably end up liking that, too.

this was or is korea's tallest skyscraper, i'm not sure if it's been recently overtaken by another building somewhere. it has 63 floors, hence the name. it's kind of a gold color that didn't show up well in this picture. near the top there's an observation deck that i went up to back in 2002 when i visited seoul. the view was cool, but even better than that was a exhibit of photos of seoul circa 1900. it was just as congested as it is now, only with tons of tiny little wood huts.