Bukchon Village & Namdaemun Markets

After a big day yesterday, we slept in a while this morning. Our original plan was to include a trip to the Namsan Seoul Tower today, but the pollution haze had settled in and with no wind to blow it away, we decided that we would leave that until later in the week when some clearer weather is predicted. We were always going to start the day at the Bukchon Village in any case, so we jumped on the metro after breakfast. Debbie has been very good at mapping out our metro journeys as they often involve multiple changes of subway line to get to the final destination.

The Bukchon Village is an area of Seoul where there has been an attempt to preserve that historical essence of the old trading economy. There are a number of galleries, food stores, coffee shops  and speciality traders down main street of the village. Interestingly one of the local photographers has taken photos of all the shop owners to be displayed in front of the shops. It si really quite unique and we decided that we liked it.

We walked up the main street and then wound our way through the alley ways. One of the most common reasons for visitors coming to this area is to rent a traditional costume and be photographed in it. This seemed to be a very popular thing to do, however I did not fancy myself in one of the long elaborate dresses. This did seem to be an exclusively female activity today, but Debbie did tell me that her internet research indicated that I could also dress up as a mighty Korean warrior if I wanted to. I did decline her kind offer as she also declined the opportunity for ‘dress ups’.

There were some wonderful examples of Japanese influence on the architecture and design in the area.

By the time we walked through the village it was time for some lunch. We walked through some alley ways and found a place that seemed popular, so we thought this must be good. We sat down and the lady said ‘Menu’ and pointed at a board on the wall….

Needless to say, we weren’t sure how we were going to choose something that we might like from that menu, when a young fellow from the next table asked ‘Do you mind if I help you?’ We found out later he had just come back from 4 years studying in the USA, and was a fluent english speaker. We gratefully accepted his offer and he explained that this place was best known for it’s duck meals. We agreed that would be nice … and he ordered Barbecued Duck for us. I still don’t know where it says that on the menu… but it looked like this and was delicious.

With the change in plans we then went to the Namdaemun Markets, one of Seoul’s most famous. They sell everything in different alleys, from freshly cooked food to handbags, clothes, shoes, stationery and even some dead fish. It was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours soaking up the market atmosphere.

While I didn’t see much evidence of technology… I did see one shop that probably could have done with my assistance….

Their SPAM filtering did not seem to working very well!

On that note, we headed back to the hotel, with Debbie again performing excellent navigation on the metro to get us back to our home base. We decided that after our feast of duck at lunch time that a few wines and a food top up in the Club Lounge would suffice. We weren’t going to starve anytime soon.

Until tomorrow!