Here we are in Seoul, and loving it. Such a nice change after the hot climate of Kuala Lumpur. The temperatures started out in the low 80’s but recently have been around 70 each day. (28 C, now 21C). It is perfect for getting out and exploring the city. We have been exploring a lot. We found our apartment without any trouble after taking a taxi from the airport. It took us about 15 minutes to figure out the door code (the host had outdated instructions) but after that we settled into our nice 1,000 square foot (100 sq M) apartment. After doing a quick unpack we headed out for supper and found “restaurant row” just a block away. The restaurants here tend to be tiny by US standards, with seating anywhere from 10 to 40 people. We found a place that looked good and were seated. We chose our meal, a shared cooked meal, prepared on the table in front of us. Every now and then our hosts would stop by and add a few ingredients or stir things up and adjust the temperature. After about 15 minutes, our meal was ready – and it was delicious.
Nearly every restaurant provides a container of cold water and cups. And each meal tends to be served with a number of small side dishes, condiments or foods like Kimchi.
(By the way, we’ve bumped up the size of the photos. We are hoping you will enjoy seeing what we see in more detail, but let us know if you think this is slowing down the website)
Next day, the first project is to get some cash from an ATM and find a grocery store. Finding the ATM was relatively easy, just needed to find ones that say “global” on them. Groceries were more challenging. Google maps doesn’t really work here and our open source map didn’t list much either. Kakao map and Naver maps are Korean language maps that have some English, but aren’t very good at searching in English. We finally tracked down a grocery store about half a kilometer from our house. Can you spot it below?
The entrance is on the far left under the orange horizontal bar. You enter a long corridor and take a right at the end to find the grocery!
Shopping is challenging for us since nearly everything is in Korean. This shouldn’t have been a surprise as we’re used to shopping in Vietnamese grocery stores in the Twin Cities. Everything on the product is in another language but the ingredient list is ALSO listed in English. Probably required for importing into the US, but here we are on our own! Our translation app helps a little, but it’s still a guessing game for many items. Part of the adventure! Many unique foods and vegetables to try, and an even more amazing selection of mushrooms than Kuala Lumpur.
We are located in the NW section of the historic old city center of Seoul. The original city wall is behind us to the Northwest, running along the top of a small mountain range. There are half a dozen temples inside the city walls with one of them just half a kilometer from our apartment. Below is Deoksugung palace during the changing of the guard. We watched the ceremony then went back a few days later to tour the inside of the palace. Korea charges admission to the palaces, but only 1,000 Won or less than 1 dollar US.
We are finding Korea to be very easy to navigate. The subway and buses are fast and easy to use, we use the Citymapper app to give us directions for mass transit. Fares are done using E-cards, which we add money to, then just tap them on the reader at the start and end of our trip. There are many fun areas to explore – winding streets filled with small shops and restaurants, little coffee houses and bakeries. Below is one of the restaurants that caught my eye.
By the way, I’m having fun with the new camera. All the pics you are seeing now are either from the new Fuji camera, or our Pixel 3 phones. I’ve settled on a raw photo processor, Capture One for the Fuji image processing. I shoot raw images instead of jpegs since they give me more latitude when processing pictures, to bring out shadow detail and the like. But enough of the technical, here’s a few more pics of the food markets North of the Cheonggyecheon-ro river, near the city’s Eastern wall.
One day we headed to the Eastern side of traditional Seoul, where Deb had found a store that had knitting supplies. After a quick subway ride we ended up in a large shopping center, made up of 5 buildings. Each building was around 20,000 square feet (2,000 sq m) per level, and the one we ended up in was 8 floors? tall. We wandered around for a while, picked up some replacement webbing and buckles for Deb’s backpack, then finally tracked down the floor with knitting supplies. Each level of the building has a hundred or so shops, ranging from 100 to 1000 square feet each. (10-100 sq m) Different sections of each floor were devoted to different items, knitting, cloth, lace and decorations, threads, etc. One section had industrial sewing machines where they would sew up simple items for you. Deb picked up a couple more skeins of yarn to work with, but plans on going back.
After making our way through the store (listed as the largest fabric and sewing store in the world) we wandered around the east side of the city wall, and eventually made our way up to a traditional Korean avenue. Fun to see the older houses.
On our way back we stopped at a French restaurant, and were served a nice four course meal. One of the few times here we haven’t been eating Korean food.
We have found that the Koreans like their political protests and rallies. We find large crowds during holidays, but also on weekdays. We also hear sound trucks moving around our neighborhood on occasion. The rallies themselves are crowded, and noisy, but we feel perfectly safe being around them. The police monitor things carefully, bringing in busloads of officers to keep an eye on things.
Deb found a cat cafe near by, so of course we had to go. I might have chosen the racoon cafe myself, (yes, that’s a thing!) but it was fun to hang out with kitties again. We found an alcove with a heated floor, and once we settled in the cats were happy to come by to see us and get some pets.
During one of Seoul’s national holidays we wandered around downtown, and caught a few performances. The Seoul pic below shows Seoul plaza, where we saw a one man performance about balance. In the background of the Seoul plaza you can see a building built from cardboard. (above the second U) There were also interactive artworks, and a performance stage.
Below is the Cheonggyecheon-ro river, which runs from the center of the city to the Eastern wall. It is recessed below grade, and designed for pedestrians.
We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant, a “chicken and beer” style which is quite popular here. Just like it sounds- all manner of fried and breaded chicken. Garlic, hot chili, and many other styles. Just outside was a flower vending machine, perfect for helping out with the “oops, I stayed out too late at the bar” nights.
Well, that’s all for now. We’ve got more to post, including an update with Yesul (from the New Zealand mountain post) but will try to get at that next week.
