Seoul 2015 - 6/16

Welcome back to another of my posts about our trip to Seoul!
This is what we did on Saturday, July 25th~


Today we split again. John was still away, Philip was meeting some new friends in Hongdae (홍대), and Cindy, Camilla, Alex, and I decided to be educated people and go to the Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁), which is located in the same area as we lived in, Jongno-gu, and actually not that far from our hostel.

Before we visited the palace though, we bought some brunch from a little store Anpan store here:
Jongno 3-ga 103-2, Jongno-gu, Seoul.
서울 종로구 종로3가 103-2 종로명인단팥빵

They had pictures hanging of the different breads available. I ordered the one in the picture below~

We took our food with us and went down to the stream that runs parallel with Cheonggyecheon-ro (청계천로) to sit down and eat. There was more of the nut paste inside than I had thought and the bun overall tasted more nutty than I had expected so I ended up only eating half and throwing out the rest. I don't think the others were too impressed with theirs either except for Cindy.

As we were sitting there eating, it began to rain so we huddled together and sheltered ourselves with our umbrellas.

It was really nice sitting there. The stream is leveled a few meters below the rest of the streets and none of the noisy reaches down there. All we could hear was the sounds of the water splashing against the stones.

The sight was beautiful as well.

Once we were done eating and taking pictures, we walked back up and headed towards the palace.

We came to a park, which I later found out was called Tapgol Park (탑골공원), where a lot of elder people were hanging out and seeking shelter from the rain. I'm pretty sure we saw some of them play mahjong!
In the park you will find a statue of Son Byeong-hee (손병희), the one to the left, and I think the one to the right is of Han Yong-Wun (한용운 ). There might have been more but I didn't take more pictures than the ones shown in this post.

Oh a selca!

Okay back to my story. The park holds great historical importance as it houses a couple of national treasures including the statues above. This ten-story stone pagoda is found in the part as well.

Music could be heard as we left the park and we decided to follow the sound and check it out.
Apparently it was some sort of music performance and a lot of people were gathered there to watch.

The one to the outer left was playing a sort of flute (I think) and the man beside him was saying a bunch of sounds/words, which the others followed with their drums. When they were done, a group of kids took over.


We walked and walked and walked (and took the subway) until we finally reached Gyeongbokgung (경복궁) palace!

It was raining cats and dogs and the rain drops were only getting bigger and hitting harder as we entered the place.

Buuuut it was still super hot! And humid! If you didn't get wet because of the rain, you'd be wet anyways due to the humidity.

The rain was a little too much for us though so we walked to the other side of the square and hid under a counter where tickets were normally sold (It was closed that day for some reason).

We didn't have much space as you see. At most half a meter.

Woooh another selca.

As the rain subsided a bit, we went over to have our pictures taken with these 'guards' and their fake beards.

We finally figured out which way to go but before we could enter, we had to sanitize our hands due to the MERS threat being an actual scare at the time of our trip. Some actual guards were placed nearby to make sure that people actually did it.

And then we were through!

People were gathering here as well to seek shelter from the rain.

Selcaaa! The three black rectangles were actually open windows so you could look inside to see a throne, which I sadly did not get any good pictures of.

Looking out. The unclear sky was not due to pollution or anything like that but simple the rain being so heavy.

We walked out one of the sides and came to the palace of the Crown Prince. This was within the same premises and it was quite a surprise to see how huge the place was!

Two stones plates showed a map and gave us a quick introduction to the place.

We entered... only to see yet another group of people hurdling together to seek shelter.

We, too, took minor breaks when the rain got too hard. Okay, it sounds like I'm just making up excuses and blaming the rain for us being lazy but it really did rain a lot that day! Actually, once we got back to the hostel, Maria told me that we should take care since a typhoon was coming to Korea. It ended up changing path though so we got away with just some of the rain.

While we were just sitting there anyways, why not take more selcas to send home to our friends?

All these rooms had served specific purposes at the time of the early Joseon. There were kitchens, bedroom chambers, banquet halls, etc.

These rooms were different from the first buildings we had seen. Whereas we, at first, had come to a new building every time we had walked through a gate, these little houses/rooms were spread out and we had to walk quite a bit to get around to all of them.
This was (fake) food stacked in one of the rooms to show how food had been stacked many years ago. This was probably for the bigger ceremonies.

No one was allowed to enter the rooms so we walked on these paths to look inside the rooms while preventing our feet from getting soaked.

Have some more random pictures~

The skies were getting darker so we decided to get home before the weather would get too bad.

Now that we were there anyways, we decided to take what was supposed to have been a quick look into the National Palace Museum of Korea (국립고궁박물관), which was near the gate we had entered the palace from. I don't have any pictures from there though as we weren't allowed to take pictures.

Now we could go home - and just as the thunder and lightning began! The sky had gotten darker and darker and by now, even though we had been carrying around umbrellas all the time, our shoes were completely soaked. On our way home I saw this gate down in the subway. Alex and I ran through it just in case! I'm not sure if it meant that we will never get old and just not stay old forever.

Once we got back to the hostel, Camilla and Cindy had been so worn out that they decided to nap. When the clock hit 18.00, the time we had decided on to meet up for dinner, Camilla had a stomach ache and was told to stay home. Alex, Philip, Cindy, and I had dinner at a place not too far away. 

We really screwed up that night. When we wanted  to order, the man serving us kept pointing towards the BBQ and said something in Korean to the guys but we didn't understand and asked for the noodles that we wanted. While we were waiting for our food, Philip figured that we were probably only supposed to have picked between the BBQs (given that that was what everyone else was eating). Due to the language barrier, the man ended up serving us what we had originally ordered. We enjoyed our food in shame.
We didn't know what was in the red sauce (the bowl in the middle) so Cindy and I decided to split a piece now that we were already food buddies and splitting almost every meal. She tried to part one but it slipped and the sauce, apparently chili, got all over my arms, dress, and even both eyelids  ・ㅡ・

We brought back some bibimbap (비빔밥) for Camilla before going to Hongdae.

Apparently a dance group that Philip knew from Sweden called R-10 was going to perform there and he'd heard that some pretty talented people would be joining the rap battle as well. So we watched both them and some Koreans perform before parting with Philip, who wanted to stay there while we went out looking for shoes for both Cindy and Alex.

We walked down a street with a lot of people yelling and loud music playing. It turned out they (the guys in blue shirts with hats hanging around their necks) were advertising for this sort of rave/water gun party going on and picking up people up as they passed by. I wish we could have joined!

Alex and I bought some fancy surgical masks. For the ones who don't know Korean, the symbols on Alex's is the Korean letter 'ㅋ', which, when put together like that, is used to express laughter.

When we found Philip later, he was eating with some friends and it was kinda awkward just to sit there as none of us knew them so instead we went to a café to sit at until it closed. We also made a quick stop inside a Hello Kitty café that we passed by. Everything was so cute and pink(!!) but also a bit pricey.
It was getting close to midnight and we only just caught the last subway home after having run through from one end to another in the underground. Horrible idea. Let’s never do that again.

Once we got back to the hotel, Camilla wasn't there. Neither she nor Philip had the keys and wouldn't be able to get in unless we went to sleep with unlocked doors. Cindy and I didn't care much about this but short after we'd gone to bed, Alex messaged us. He sure wasn't fond of the idea. We went to his room to calm him down and it didn't take long before Cindy had conquered John's bed. Eventually we stayed so Alex wouldn't have to worry and I stayed up watching over them. I stayed awake until Camilla came home at 4am.

You can see Cindy's recordings from today from 5:35 to the end of the video. The Hello Kitty café was something we found while waiting for Philip but it was about to close because it was so late.

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