Seoul Winter Trip, Day 3 (Jan 18, 2014)
In the morning, we picked up Kak Marissa at the station and took her to the house. Then we directly left. We went to Gwanghwamun Square again.
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| Full team! |
This time, we bought tickets and went inside Gyeongbokgung Palace. The place was so magical. I felt like I was being taken back to the past. Many Korean movies and dramas took place here. The area is bigger than I thought and there are many buildings. There is a cafe and souvenir shop. The waiters wear Hanbok (Korean traditional clothing for women). Let the pictures do the story.
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| The water is frozen |
We didn't realize it was afternoon already. At 2 pm, we could watch the royal guard changing ceremony.
The exit is on the west and we ended up being in front of National Palace Museum of Korea. We thought we had to pay to go inside but it was free admission. I'm actually not a museum lover, but this place is interesting. It doesn't look like a museum to me, more like a gallery. Very interesting.
We were starving and felt really cold. We decided to eat at Tosokchon, a restaurant that is famous for its popular samgyetang (chicken ginseng soup). The restaurant is only three stations away from where we were. When we arrived, it wasn't lunch time anymore, but there were still many people! Without much thinking, we directly ordered pajeon (onion pancake) and of course the samgyetang. As usual, we were given free kimchi. It was the best kimchi I had eaten while in Seoul! Yes, it has the best taste and there was much of it because they kept giving us when they saw it's empty. The main dishes came. The pajeon was good and that samgyetang was even better. It was hot and just perfect for our empty stomach during the cold weather.
After that, we visited Bukchon Hanok Village but there wasn't much to see and there weren't too many people. Maybe because after getting off at the station we already walked so far. We were tired and too lazy to go further. We found Bukchon Cultural Center but it was nearly closed. The assistants let us come inside, though. We could take a picture with Hanbok for 15 minutes. And it was 20 minutes before closing time! We didn't know if we could find another place to take picture with Hanbok so we decided to take picture there. It costs 8,000 won/person and each got one polaroid picture. We then realized that it was very expensive! The space wasn't wide enough. What makes it worse is one of the staffs was very unfriendly. She didn't seem to like our presence and her expression and body language act as if asking us to leave quickly. Really, it wasn't just me who thought so, but so did everybody. When we came again to Insadong again on the next day, we went inside Insadong Tourist Information Center and found out it only costs 3,000 won for taking pictures with Hanbok with wider space and we could spend 30 minutes there! Huft..
We wanted to go to Samcheong-dong but it was dark already and people were walking the opposite way so we went to Myeongdong and shopped again (oh no). This time, we visited Lotte Young Plaza because there was SM Pop Up Store. We the K-Popers were so happy!
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