After eating breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and walked with our luggage to the bus stop. When we tried to get on the first bus, after my wife had paid for her fare, the bus driver saw the rolling luggage and said we couldn't get on and promptly refunded our money via coins. But after we got off we counted the coins and realized he had refunded us a discounted fare or something! Sigh. 40 cents poorer but none the wiser, we asked the second bus driver if we could get on with our luggage and he said no as well so we promptly flagged down a cab and took that to the KTX terminal. Maybe it's a Busan thing or that particular bus route, because when we were taking our luggage from my wife's grandparent's house to the Gimpo airport the drivers had no issue with our luggage.
The KTX train is a really nice train that goes super fast (190 mph). It took us just over 2 hours to get to Seoul and the landscape flew by! I have a timelapse of it, maybe I'll try to post it up later. I really enjoyed riding in the train because:
1. It was like taking a plane but with more space and less hassle. You don't need to go through security and be there over an hour before it leaves and check your luggage, etc. You just walk into the terminal and buy tickets from a machine and walk down to the train when it's boarding, find your assigned seat, put your luggage in the rack above your seat, and you're ready to go!
2. We had wifi from our mobile router so I could play Hearthstone while we rode the train. We also checked email and instant messaged with some family members.
3. My wife had found some great food for us to eat while we were on the train - hardboiiled eggs, some rice triangles that have seaweed on the outside and filling (I forget what those are called). My filling was bulgogi, my wife's was kimchi and tuna. We also drank a delicious and well-named yogurt drink (picture 3). =]
4. They have little carts that go by every once in a while with food on them (sorry I didn't get a picture of those). One was a cheaper, every-man's kind of food cart with banana milk and bags of chips and sausages and things. The other cart was a more expensive, name-brand kind of food cart with muffins and fancy cookies and nice wrappers.
When we got into Seoul we spent some time trying to coordinate with relatives whether we were going to go back to her grandparent's house that night or stay with some other relatives near Seoul, but we ended up just feeling like we were pretty tired from traveling for a good portion of the day, so we took a subway and bus ride to get back to her grandparents.
It really did feel like coming home after a vacation, like a trip within a trip. Although I'm definitely glad we took this trip to go to Jeju and Busan on our own, because it felt much more like vacation with us traveling alone and enjoying ourselves.
For dinner we had a nice home cooked meal that my wife's grandmother made, including bean paste stew (denjang jigae).
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