Seoul, Korea: Day 2

We weren't too jetlagged on our first morning in Seoul; getting up around 7am after a good night's sleep. We had a list of sights from a Korean friend, but no idea how to get to them, so we headed for the concierge desk, where she not only told us where everything was, but how best to get there, and most importantly, what to eat.

After a quick stop at G25 (a Korean store much like 7-11) for breakfast, we were off to the Gyeongbokgung, which used to be the main palace of the Korean royal family. We had a great time wandering around the grounds, even thought my foot was kind of gimpy from the night before. Good thing I'd thought to bring my ankle brace! I think we spent maybe 2 hours there, before heading to Insadong (a shopping area) for lunch.

I took a couple of photos that I thought were decent:



At the concierge's suggestion, we went to Gugong, a restaurant specializing in bibimbap. We decided to order one of their set menus for two people; it came with a regular bibimbap, a dolsot (stone pot) version, and a mung bean (aka green bean) noodle salad. I added an order of seafood pancake too that, and I could tell that the waitress thought we were over-ordering, but she doesn't know D like I do. Lunch was delicious! We'd been a bit disappointed with the previous night's dinner, but this meal restored our faith in Korean food. I especially liked the mung bean salad; I hadn't had anything like it before, and the pieces of noodle were nice and "crunchy" or "q-q" (as the Taiwanese say).

After lunch, we wandered around Insadong for a bit looking at all the arts and crafts stores, before deciding to hit Changdeokgung, another palace nearby. This particular palace had been inhabited by members of the royal family until 1989, and so it was grander and more modern in places. It was also only accessible via tour, so we were forced to follow around a huge group of English-speaking tourists. That pretty much killed my experience; I enjoyed our time at the Gyeongbokgung much more, in no small part due to the ability to avoid the crowds. It's really difficult to take any good photos at all, when there are people everywhere.

From here we decided to cab it home to our hotel, where we got the concierge to help us buy tickets to Nanta, a cooking-themed show that we'd heard was extremely popular. It was an interesting audience; primarily English, Japanese, or Chinese-speaking. The man to D's left was from Ghana, and said that he and his group had been in Korea for a month (!) on a cultural exchange program. Pretty cool.

There were five actors in the cast, and they spent most of the time doing percussion with various kitchen implements. There was also some juggling, some fire-throwing, some physical comedy, a little bit of audience interaction, lots of knives being thrown, and very very little speaking, which was good for the mixed-language crowd. Anyway, the show was cute, but it was very much Asian-style humor, and I wondered if it would have mass appeal on Broadway, etc.

Nanta "Cookin":


From there, we walked to a traditional Korean restaurant called Hanmiri, where we were served an amazing X course meal. I will let the photos speak for themselves; suffice to say that we were both stuffed and that all the food was delicious.