Day 2 – Seoul Itinerary

This is day 2 of my 4-day Seoul Itinerary. Seoul while a lively modern city is also one full of tradition and history. In this part of the itinerary, we will hit the historic sights in the city before finishing the day at Myeongdong for some shopping. However, to avoid Palace fatigue (i.e. getting sick of visiting too many palaces in one go), I broke up the itinerary to cover some today and some on the last day. This will be better and easier for the average traveller both in terms of physical exertion and also planning.

Day 1 of the itinerary can be found here.

Bukchon Hanok Village

This is a location that can either be the first or last of this itinerary.

It may be better to do it first early in the morning to avoid the photo spoiling human throng that may possibly ruin any nice photos you may want to take there.  

The Bukchon Hanok Village is a Korean traditional and historic village in Seoul located between Gyeongbok Palace, Changdeok Palace and Jongmyo Royal Shrine. It makes for a perfect location for photos of historic Korea and you should expect tourists in rented Hanboks walking around for their photos.

Getting there is easy as the village is located close to Anguk Station. The tricky part is getting the right exit. Some guides will say Exit 2 and some will say Exit 3. Both are correct. However, the signs directing you to the village may be misleading. The closest sign, that I found, is located just off Exit 2 on the ground:

Thereafter the directional signs sort of disappear (except for another marker stating its 300m away) leaving you wondering whether you are going in the right direction. This is where it gets tricky. The trail makes a right turn (which is not obvious) and begins at the location marked 1 in the map below. However, if you continued walking straight, you will eventually wander back on track. You will, however, end up bypassing markers 1-4. If you are trying to be economical in terms of time spent, you can start off at 6 moving your way up to 11.

Why are you here? Maybe these photos can help answer that question:

Once done, make your way back down the slope and see if you can find this rather amusing banner >< :

Changdeokgung Palace and Secret Garden

Originally built as a secondary palace to Gyeongbokgung, this palace avoids the formalistic design of Gyeongbokgung (i.e. not built along the North-South axis of Seoul). It, however, benefits from this as the palace was built to accommodate the existing layout of the surrounding landscape and is more pleasing to the eye.

For the history buffs, you can consider reading up from the information boards placed around the palace the history behind the attraction and how it eventually became the main residence of the Korean Royal Family after Gyeongbokgung was razed by the Japanese in the 1500s in their quest to subjugate the Korean Peninsula.

The Palace is broken up into two parts. The actual Palace and the Gardens. You require a separate ticket for the Gardens.

I found the tour of the Gardens worth it as it is guided tour with loads of informative snippets that add flavour to your visit. You also get a chance to explore the back of the Palace and walk through the gardens. Pretty decent a tour. You do, however, have to time your visit as these tours have specific timings for different languages:

Tip: If travelling with elderly or youths, do keep your passports close by as you may get certain discounts visiting such locations. I also recall there being combined tickets with other Palaces. So, if you intend to visit Changyeonggung, it may be worthwhile getting a combined ticket. There is an entrance beside the Garden Entrance that leads to Changyeonggung. So, you may consider entering Changyeonggung via that entrance instead. I have not tried this entrance before so please check with the attendants stationed there.

In my case, as it was winter and I am with my mum, I decided to keep the itinerary short to avoid staying out for too long. You can always consider adding Changyeonggung and Jongmyo Royal Shrine if you are up for it.

Myeongdong

My niece was rather relieved to escape from the Palaces and to return to the modern world when we visited Myeongdong. A shopping mecca for anything related to cosmetic, it is more of a location you should visit just for the experience and not actually the shopping. This is because most of the promotions and discounts there appear to be also available elsewhere in their other branches. That said, shopping in Myeongdong may net you freebies; purchase enough items, the store attendants may throw in one or two samples free to close a deal. There are also food stalls along the way:

I went into a buying frenzy. The face masks were being sold on a 1-for-1 basis at approximately 10,000 won for a pack of 10 ordinary masks (i.e. not the fanciful pearl based / snail slime based masks). So, with the 1-for-1 offer, you are paying about 5,000 won for 10 masks (or approximately S$0.6 per mask). OMG!

We were in the mood for some Korean BBQ and we settled for Wangbijib. The ratings were good and the queue long. Thankfully, the owner decided to parachute a group in front of us into another branch as the restaurant was too full to accommodate such a large group. This effectively brought us right to the front of the queue. For those having Korean BBQ for the first time, the waiters/attendants will do the cooking for you. Just seat back and enjoy the meal.

Having filled all bellies, we decided to visit Osulloc’s Myeongdong Branch for some tea to wash down the rich food we just had. Osulloc is apparently South Korea’s biggest national tea brand and being a tea fanatic, I definitely had to try their teas. I ordered a Hojicha Latte while my mum and niece went for a green tea and a green tea latte respectively. Niece didn’t really enjoy hers as it was apparently not sweet enough. What do youngsters these days know anyway? The outlet also sells the brand’s own tea products. I bought a few packs of fermented tea thinking it was a variant of Pu-er. I was wrong. The Oolong was still pretty good.

Okay, folks! That’s all for now.

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