Seoul 2019, Day 3
Since we spent most of our first full day in Seoul in the DMZ, which is not in Seoul at all, we decided to stay in Seoul for our second day. We knew we wanted to see at least one of the palaces, but we couldn’t do both and also see other parts of the area, so we chose to go to Changdeokgung Palace, and take part in a group tour of the grounds, which was the only way to see some of the better parts of the palace.
It’s been so long, that I honestly can’t remember much of our visit, but I do remember the beautiful palace structures and gardens, such as these:
At one point toward the end of the tour, the guide informed us that there was one last spot on the tour, but it would take about an hour or so. She then told us that if we wanted to, we could stop the tour early and backtrack to the entrance, and we took her up on that offer because we didn’t have much time to see everything that we wanted to see in one day. After some more walking around the palace grounds, we headed out to Bukchon Hanok Village.
This area of Seoul is a traditional village near the two main palace attractions, so it generates a lot of tourist activity. However, people have been living there for centuries, and the city has preserved its traditional aesthetic, complete with narrow alleyways and stone streets:
At the long, main alley in the village, there were signs informing visitors to be quiet while walking around so that the residents wouldn’t be disturbed. They took this very seriously, as they had numerous people in the area making sure that no one was too loud by going up to them and pointing to the large sign that’s usually right next to them. It reminded us of our time in Sacre Coeur, where there was someone inside aggressively approaching anyone making any sound, and loudly going “Shhhh!” to their face. It was so frequent, that it started to blend into the ambient sounds of the cathedral, but from time to time, Nick and I make a joke about it whenever we’re in a place that requests silence.
After spending a few hours walking the streets and going into various stores, we went back to the hotel to take a quick rest, and then headed off to Hongdae for the evening. It’s an area located next to one of the universities in Seoul, so we expected some cool stores, and we weren’t disappointed. There were many clothing stores, including this one:
We didn’t actually go into Fuckfake, but we did notice a lot of fake Supreme clothing being sold everywhere in Seoul. It would be ironic, but not surprising, if Fuckfake also sold knockoff brand clothing.
There was also this cool looking mural that was outside a bar in the area:
Since it was a fairly hot and muggy day, we needed a break to get a drink, and found a cool looking bar with a rooftop terrace. I got a lemonade, and nick ordered a beer. After finding a seat upstairs, a couple of minutes later, his beer arrived:
I can’t remember what type of beer he ordered, but it came with cinnamon sprinkled on top of the head of foam, which was not mentioned anywhere on the menu. Needless to say, it sort of ruined the beer for Nick, but he drank as much as he could before the cinnamon got too intense. Nick mentioned that when he was in Thailand, they also topped their beer with unconventional items, such as whipped cream:
Since I don’t drink, I never really paid attention to how beer is served in Asia, given that we have two data points of beer with various toppings, I wonder if this is more common than we think in this part of the world…
While the beer at the Hongdae bar was strange, it was still nice to sit and take a break with a view of the area. We weren’t really hungry enough for dinner, but didn’t want to go back to the hotel, so we started searching for other things to do, and discovered a Meerkat (and other animals) cafe nearby, so we decided to see what that was all about.
We weren’t disappointed by the number of meerkat they had. But before we could do anything, we had to follow some rules, such as emptying out our pockets. Turns out, meerkats are very good at digging into pockets and taking anything and everything out of them. The cafe kept the meerkat in a large enclosure in the middle of the entire space, and they limited the number of people who could go in and be with them. We waited in line for a few minutes and got to go in with a few others. They seated us on the floor and gave us blankets to lay on our laps, and then they released the meerkats:
Unfortunately for us, all the meerkats liked one woman who was in our group, and spent almost all of their time laying in her lap. One of the meerkats kept trying to open up my rear pocket flap and digging around in there, so we completely understand why they wanted us to empty out our pockets.
The cafe had other animals as well, such as a couple of cats, a wallaby and a raccoon. They actually had a couple of foxes, but they were in a separate room because they weren’t ready to be with people yet. I wanted to see the raccoon, but it was only interested in terrorizing the wallaby. But one of the cafe handlers invited us over to see it, and I thought she meant that we could pet it, but no, she wanted to give us a unique experience with the raccoon:
I enjoyed this because I think raccoons are cute, but Nick wasn’t so thrilled.
We stayed for a few more minutes, and then decided to go back to the hotel to get a quick dinner, and then sleep and get ready for the next day: our trip to Busan