Sunday 13 December 2009

63 Building


The 63 building is one of the most recognizable features of the Seoul skyline, officially known as the Korea Life Insurance building it sits on Yeouido Island in the middle of the Han river. Its nickname 'The 63 building' comes from the fact that the building is 63 floors high... however this is kind of a lie as three of the floors are below ground so it is actually only 60 floors above ground. It is essentially like a mall... and contains a bunch of shops, an Aquarium, Wax museum, Imax cinema and Skyart Art gallery apparently the highest gallery in the world which contains some of the highlights of Pop art from the likes of Warhol et al. The Skyart gallery is on the 60th floor and the view of Seoul, despite it being a rather wintery foggy day was amazing... on a clear summers day it would be even better...



View from the top...





in the art gallery..... my favourite piece - apart from Warhol's Diamond dust shoes... in Korea you can only take photos of art if there is a person in the picture... hence the shadow of Shauna Teacher in hiding!!




Message wall on the top floor... people write things about the people they love... or things like 'The Irish were here!'... jokes...



Werid gnome garden....

Aquarium.... these sharks were fake




These penguins were are real! I LOVE PENGUINS! I was very over excited!



This penguin was soooooo cool and so close!!

This dude was touchable... however the sign said he might bite... wish i had just grabbed him and hidden him in bag


These fish were so cute! Love there lips....


Well it wouldn't be a proper aquarium if you couldn't find NEMO!!!!!


The wax museum of the 63 building is just weird.... they had Jesus and the entire 'cast' of The Last Supper.....

David Beckham...........



And ummm........ Gandhi!


Last but not least we went to see some freaky 3D film, this is me in my specs!!!


Random Korea...


You can watch television on your phones. Most koreans do. This dude was watching the news on the bus...





What not to do on the subway


emergency breathing apparatus on the subway... did the Koreans not see Titanic? Did not learn the valuable lesson about the lifeboats? I really hope I am not involved in a scenario on the subway that would involve the use o this apparatus. There are clearly not enough masks to go around




TOTO


Toto is a rather bizarre toy museum/shop in Insa-dong, full of forgotten and battered dolls and all of the other childhood toys that you forgot about... or didn't. I was very happy to see a cabbage patch doll make an appearance - even it did look rather sad and abused...










Saturday in Insa-dong

A few weeks back we headed into Insa dong to do some wandering, see some art and generally immerse ourselves in Seoul culture...



















I stopped myself from going totally crazy and spending all my cash on random pieces of pretty junk however I will be going back and next time I am highly likely to come back with a birdcage...

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