Hanok & Hanbok

To start the day we went to Bukchon Hanok village. It’s an area within Seoul that is made of old Korean buildings and streets. We walked around the old buildings and tiny shops. We even saw a crew filming what I assume was an episode of a Korean drama. In one of the shops a lady gave us a free cookie, in another shop a lady yelled at us for using the bathroom. All in all it went well.

We walked all the way down from the hilly Hanok to the National Folk Museum of Korea, which is inside palace grounds and offered free admission. We saw a cool exhibit about Korean death rituals. Apparently in Korea when a person dies, their loved ones would go up to a roof with their clothes and yell their name. They would also make a bier to send them to the next world and make dolls for entertainment purposes. You get a lot of gifts when you die.

There were other exhibits, too. One depicted major life milestones in Korean culture, another historic Korean life through the seasons. There was an exhibit on K-culture and at the end of it Guy was delighted to notice a video display wall showing faces of about 20 silent Korean women and one white man speaking.

We then went to a noodle soup and dumplings place that was on a Michelin list. It was very busy. We waited in line for not very long and got in. We saw the cooks making the dumplings, drank makgeolli and ate soup.

We rented Hanbok and walked to the back of the same large palace we saw before, this time to a Pavilion of Far-Reaching Fragrance in the back. It was cold in our costumes so we stayed less than an hour.

Hungry from walking, we dined at a tiny Hanwoo beef restaurant hidden behind a butcher shop, where a nice young Korean dude grilled our meat for us. Hanwoo is a prestigious native Korean cattle like Japan’s Wagyu. Guy had peated Korean whiskey with it, making this our most expensive meal by far.

On our way to the hotel we stopped by a convenience store to buy snacks. We had so much fun trying random weird snacks at convenience stores that now we want to do this every time we travel.

In the hotel we did some Black Friday shopping, then went to sleep early to wake up at dawn to go to the DMZ.