Step by step covering Seoul (2)

Day 3: Gyeongbokgung & National Folk Museum >>> Bukchun >>> Insadong

After consulting our tourist map of Seoul, we decided that we would just walk to all the sites that we wanted to visit. It was all really in the same area, and our hostel was located just about 15 minutes away, so we thought since we had time and the weather was good we might as well enjoy as much time outdoors as possible. This was particularly valuable to me cuz in Hong Kong we just don't have the time or good weather to do that - it's either too hot or raining.

We went to Coffee Guru (that's what we call it, the real name is just too much of a tongue-twister), and had our Americanos with bread that Eve got from a bakery. Koreans really like their bread slightly sweet. In the bakery, you can hardly find any savoury buns, all of them are sweet rolls or buns with cream or chocolate... but with a cup of Americano, it's perfect!

right: photo by eve wu

We wanted to get to Gyeongbokgung (a palace) for 9:30am to join the English guided tour. We got there early and found out that the tour wouldn't start until 11:30am! So we took our sweet time taking some photos of the exterior of the palace and the guards. Then we went to the National Folk Museum which was literally right next to it, and spent some time there taking photos as well.

Other than the National Folk Museum, I've been to all the places that were on our itinerary for the day. But it's ok, in a way I knew the routes to take and that saved us some time from having to retrace our steps.

The National Folk Museum was quite interesting, they had many different exhibits, both outdoors and indoor. The outdoor exhibits was like a model town from the last century... and it was almost like visiting a ghost town cuz there was no one there! haha.....

The indoor exhibits were on the Korean life stages and traditional life. So we saw the ceremonies that take place for a boy and girl when they become an adult, the marriage ceremony, birth, death etc.

The tour of Gyeongbokgung was like a normal guided tour, nothing particularly special... the only thing that really stuck with me was that the Koreans had designed some really smart heating/cooling systems for their buildings. All the buildings in the palace were heated by burning charcoal so that it heated the air in tunnels under the buildings and making the floor and rooms warm and toasty. Also they built chimneys that were nicely decorated on the exterior with hand carvings so that you wouldn't even have noticed that they were chimneys. And in order to avoid the soot from the smoke settling on the buildings and ruining the ornate details, they built chimney stacks that were almost like an extension of the building. - sorry, no photo, maybe Eve will have one.

We thought that the palace grounds might be a nice backdrop for some action photos, so we tried to set the self-timer on our cameras, but we never got a shot of us in the air. Whenever it snapped us, we were either getting ready to jump or already back on the ground...

In the end we had to snap each other's photos and then a group of French ladies saw us and offered to take a couple of photos for us... so nice of them, merci beaucoup!

On our way out, we saw the guard change ceremony. Saw that before, so you can see photos from my trip from last December. For lunch, we went for Samgyetang (Ginseng Chicken soup), and it's the same store that I went to last time. I think ALL guide books recommend this one, or at least the HK and Taiwanese guide books do... :)

Walking north a bit more, we went into Bukchun (north village) and there we just walked around the neighbourhood. I wanted to visit the Museum of Chicken Art just because the name sounded cool! :D But it was closed on Mondays.... :( Oh well, at least we found out why there's such a museum. In the past, I thought it was a museum of chicken parts, like artists used chicken head and feet and feathers and blood to make art....

From Bukchun, we went down into Insadong, which is basically a street known for tourists to buy souvenirs from Korea - porcelain cups, masks, bookmarks, fans, clothes, fabric, calligraphy brushes etc. We also stopped by Samssigil, a mall with more souvenirs and some cool things, like these glasses!

Today's itinerary was really to go to all the "touristy" spots, things that we might not really be interested in, but have to go at least once and then we can forget about it - I mean insadong (for me personally, I don't think it's all that great, but that might be because I'm just not a souvenir person).

What we were both looking forward to was dinner! I had been raving to Eve about Bossam, steamed pork that is wrapped in lettuce or sesame leaf... it's so soft and not at all fatty-tasting. Anyways, we finished with our itinerary for the day pretty early and were not really hungry yet, so we decided to go to the Korean Tourism Office (KTO) that was in the area and also really close to our hostel. On the way to the KTO, I had to find the restaurant that I had bossam at last December... don't know if I just have an exceedingly good memory, or the fact that the bossam was really one of my most memorable discoveries on my last trip, but I had almost no trouble remembering which exact alley to turn into to find the restaurant - the first we went there, it was also by chance that we just chose the restaurant as we were so hungry... hehehe... the power of good food!

Ok back to the KTO, there we booked our tickets for a Nanta show - Cookin' Nanta, and also found out that Korea is trying to promote itself as a health care destination. There were clinics on oriental medicine, chiropractic, plastic surgery etc. very interesting, but we were too late for that day's clinic. Later on in our trip, when we had time, we dropped into the KTO again.

We returned to the restaurant a little while later and this time it was busier than the first time I was there. ;) Thankfully, this time we knew what we wanted, I just took the waitress to the signage outside their restuarant and pointed to the dish we wanted. It cost only KRW 30,000 and comes with pork bone soup (minus the potatoes) and unlimited lettuce and sesame leaves. The kimchi radish this time was spicier than I remembered, the first time I had it it was just sweeeettt, not spicy at all.... hahaha... but it was good, and we also ordered a bottle of makkegoli to go with it... and I turned extremely red!

After our extremely filling dinner, we walked back to our hostel along Cheonggyecheon stream and along the way stopped to look at some of the street stalls of accessories and snacks!

Total steps walked: 23,886 steps
Woohoo! Never thought we would be able to do that!

Some funny/random shots of the day:

Whatever it takes to get the shot...



above: a tteok store making fresh tteok (rice cakes); the 94 year old grandma who knits all day, this time her window's open, I guess cuz it's really nice weather... it's nice to be able to see her clearly.

below: strolling through the night market, Eve got a funny photo of me, I'm not really gasping over the accessories, I think I was rubbing my nose or something... hahaha....; if you've seen Korean dramas or know a little about Korean daily life, they have these trucks that go into neighbourhoods with groceries, and they ring a hand bell (like the ones you will find at schools when teachers ring the bell to call the students to line up), and all the housewives (ahjummas) will come out and buy food and household products... it just finished selling when we saw it.

left: a funny statue at the National Folk Museum, I was trying to do the same pose and face...
middle: have you had a poo-shaped red bean cake? Here's where you can buy one to try!
right: crossing cheonggyecheon stream (Eve, I love how you captured a blurred me!)