Day one: Palaces!
Jon and I ventured to two of the five palaces in Seoul on Saturday: Deoksugung (the newest of the palaces) and Gyeongbokgung (the largest, oldest, and main palace
currently). Deoksugung is located next to City Hall, right in the center of Seoul, and gave us a concise view of what Seoul Palaces are about. There are several living quarters (one for each of the royal family members), one receiving building for state affairs, and various other buildings for entertainment and business. Deoksugung in particular has two very western style buildings made from grey stone, which were used for foreign affairs. In every palace, the main receiving building has a throne within it, placed in front of a painting of the five guardian mountains of Korea. The walkway out front of these buildings also always has the plaques with the names of the officers stationed at the particular palace (as you can see from this picture, taken at Deoksugung).
The palace grounds are kept nicely, with lots of flowers blooming at this time of year.
The colors are always similar on the outside of the buildings ---the temples, shrines and older buildings I saw everywhere in Korea were all painted in this scheme, with mainly bright red, green, blue, and gold.
This building at Deoksugung was particularly important for me: it was the first place where coffee was served in this part of the world.
This chimney is an original structure. You can see the symbol of the king in the center of the brickwork. It's certainly been well maintained. The palaces have been burned and destroyed multiple times during occupations, fires, and war.
The second palace we visited, Gyeongbokgung, is just in front of the current president's residence, nestled into the mountains, and at the end of a major road in the center of the city. (If you've been watching the news recently, you might recognize this spot because it's also near where the pope visited in Seoul).
Gyeongbokgung is a much larger palace, with many receiving buildings for official affairs, and this building, built on the water for entertaining guests of the royal household.
The heating in the living quarters was a point of interest for John and I: they actually had fires going near/under the building, and allowed the heat to flow under the floors to the rooms (thus the reason why Koreans often sit on the ground in formal situations --I never really got used to this--and also, I think, why they have slept on the floor until recently). This picture shows some really beautiful chimneys outside of the queen's living quarters. These are decorated in a much different way than the rest of the buildings, and have lots of symbols around them in mosaic patterns.
This is a beautiful pagoda on the palace grounds ---they really enjoyed spending time outdoors in gardens in ancient Korea (I appreciated this, too!). The bridge is going over a pond full of lily pads, which had small yellow flowers.
Another of the more interesting parts of this palace was the area where soy sauce (and soy bean paste and chili paste) were made. These clay pots contain something that looks like tofu, which is kept in there for a long time to ferment...
You might be able to make out on this sign that it takes ten years before the soy sauce gets its black color using this fermentation method. I'm not sure how long it takes via modern methods.
Here's the library building, which contained a collection that's now housed at Seoul National University's library. This might be one of the reasons that non-permanent students and visitors aren't allowed to use the S.N.U. library (or at least, we couldn't figure out how to get in).
The living quarters in the palaces are supposed to be kept uncolored, according to Confucian ideals. We saw this in most cases. This wall is outside of the concubine residency at Gyeongbokgung. This area was one of the most popular for having your picture taken in front of that I saw in all the palaces.
Jon and I also ventured outside the palace walls to see the current president's residence (from a distance). You can't see it from my picture, but there are also guys dressed more casually with ear pieces standing on each corner across the street. I hope the guard in the middle of the road here has a short shift because I don't know if I could stay awake for long just standing and watching like this...
We enjoyed some nakchi bokum (octopus stir fried in chili sauce) at a restaurant in Hongdae for dinner on Saturday night --yum! The restaurant had some very odd art:
We also found this art piece that I liked the next day before our adventures ---I really like this solid metal ball that's shaped so that it looks like it's squishing out over the edges of its frame.
Day Two: Han River Ride
We decided to go for a bike ride on Sunday through the waterfront of the Han River (I wrote about this a bit before, too --sorry for the redundancy). Jon, Brandon (Dan's brother), Kelsey and I rented bikes for an excellent price and took a nice Sunday ride past all the masses of people in their mesh tents on this not-so-sunny afternoon. We finished our ride just in time to avoid heavy rain from a nearby typhoon.
Here's us at our next stop (we were pretty wet from running to this one!) ---the pub on the floating island.
Day Three: A City Mountain Climb
On Monday, I left Kelsey's goshiwon a little early and hiked up Gwanaksan, the mountain behind S.N.U. It's one of the guardian mountains that are pictured behind the palace thrones. The path was nicely laid with rocks and very nice wooden or stone steps. It was a perfect morning for a walk --I definitely recommend mid-week visits to the mountains in Seoul since there are lots of people who also enjoy hiking in this city.
The path I took followed a stream most of the way up the mountain - lovely! It was a bit hard to follow, but I somehow managed to make it through to the correct trail the entire way up.
Once I reached the top of the stairs in the picture above, there was a small sign that pointed in the direction of some boulders (a trail?). It turned out to be a really fun little scramble up the ridge on top of Gwanaksan to get to the actual summit. You can see the rocks you have to climb just below the radar (the big white dome) in this picture.
The view from up there was absolutely incredible! The city of Seoul is so much bigger than I could ever have imagined from the ground. White buildings sprawl in every direction around the foot of the mountain.
There are also several temples built onto Gwanaksan, one of which is right up at the top of the stairs I showed above. You could faintly hear the sound of the drums, maybe from an afternoon chant service, from the summit of the mountain.
When I reached the peak, there were several other hikers up there --a few of whom wanted to talk a bit about where I was from, and one who was even a former PhD student from Colorado! There were also --this is so weird --cats. Lots of calicos and white-and-grey-spotted tabbies, just milling around and looking a little scraggly and hungry. We saw one kitty up in the next mountainous area we hiked in, too... seems like an unlikely place for a cat, but I guess they can subsist on scraps and the other critters that feed on scraps. Here's the big rock at the top of the mountain --I made it!
Keep watching for more.... coming soon!
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