Korea: Lotte World lines and fusion food

Briefly on this blog in the past have I discussed my time working at Lotte World, in South Korea's bustling capital city of Seoul. It was, for better or worse, the furthest location from my living arrangements and required the longest commute to get to and from, clocking in at roughly three hours of transit time a day and four separate train rides. Heaven forbid I oversleep, or time out my transfers wrong- though, to be fair, the morning commute is pretty well covered by the city's subway system with frequent running trains helping ferry people to their various jobs in all the different corners of the city on time. The transportation system of, say, the city of Las Vegas, could certainly take a few pointers from how well organized and run the system in this massive catacomb of subterranean tunnels is. While I doubt any country could effectively try to compete with how unbelievably well-choreographed the Japanese train system is, Seoul's is pretty damn fantastic. Only a handful of times in six months was I ever late, and that was due mostly to user error on my part like not understanding the menus which, presumably, would warn against the trains that were stopping and going offline at the next station, or missing my train outright. Like I said, these things were squarely my fault for failing to properly utilize the system or grasping the language, so I can't fault the city or the system there. 

Once I finally did make my way to Lotte world, there was no assurance of escape from the crowds clustered together in the trains- if anything, there was a pretty solid chance it'd be even more crowded! Lotte World is a popular theme park, after all, and towards the end of my time working inside of the facility there were some new and exciting attractions introduced, which led to a huge upswing in traffic. As someone who's decidedly not super-keen on big crowds, this wasn't hugely favorable, though in reality it mainly translated to a very long line of people actively ignoring me. Fun stuff. Since I wasn't being paid hourly, and I wasn't making a huge amount of money with most of the visitors more interested in checking out the new attractions, I ended up going downstairs and grabbing a meal at a Korean-Mexican fusion restaurant inside the Jamsil station complex. It wasn't bad! 

More photos below~

Thanks for stopping by!

😛

XOXO,

NAU