Yes, everyday at a restaurant there would be a blackout. Sometimes for a few minutes, but during the last dinner the power was out for a very long time.
The streets were NEVER empty, in fact there were a surprisingly large number of cars. Depending on the color of the license plate, the cars were either for some government official, the army or personal owned. I never saw a personal car (yellow license plate), but then again, I never actively looked for one. Others said they saw one or two, though. Some of the cars were new, some of them were old):
I'm not a car guy but there were a lot of cars similar to this model.
I didn't get to see the USS Pueblo, I think it's closed until the summer. There were some other things on the tour that got moved around, like we didn't shoot guns at the gun range, we didn't get to see some king's tomb, when we got at the taekwondo place nobody was there (except girls, but I was bummed, because I wanted to spar with a North Korean) and we didn't go to the Schoolchildren's Palace. These things weren't really my tour company's fault, though, so I can't blame them. Instead we visited a water bottling plant, an ostrich farm, a middle school and an embroidery studio.
It was super easy for me. I don't want to sound like a shill, but I went with Young Pioneers. Most of the people in YP were in their early-mid 20s ( at 25, I was one of the oldest, aside from another guy who was 50). I'm really glad I wound up with that tour group, because they were really fun. Every night back at the Yanggakdo Hotel they'd go drinking, some of them not going to bed until 2AM or later. It was a great group compared to the other groups of people, who looked quite mild and boring.
Anyways, I paid them close to 1,000 Euros, e-mailed them a passport-styled photo and then met them at the airport. Supereasy for me. I already live in China and have a Chinese visa and live close to Beijing, so that was it for me.
