Diary of an Internet Addict

Itinerary

1. Gyeongbokgung (Palace)
   • Hanbok rental (from KRW15,000)
   • Watch changing of guards
   • Visit Palace grounds
2. Explore Insadong and other nearby areas:
   • Cheonggye Stream
   • Insa Korea
   • Ssamziegil
   • Namsangol Hanok Village
   • (+) Explored the Insadong shopping street near Ara Arts Centre
3. Explore Apgujeong-Rodeo area
   • Go to the Min’s Cafe
     
4. (+) Emart at Gangnam

For Days 2-4, we actually got a private hire to drive us around. You can check them out if you’d like! They’re a kind of mum-and-dad business. https://www.facebook.com/fnsquaredseoul/

For 3 days, it costed us around KRW940K, but the price may differ, depending on where you are going. We got a 7-seater car, so it’s quite worth it if you split the price.

1. Gyeongbokgung (Palace) (more info)

Gyeongbokgung (Palace) is a huge compound north of Seoul. It is flanked by high-rise buildings on one side, and a clear view of Bukhansan National Park on the side – quite a spectacle to behold. If you’re driving or being driven, they have a carpark for the vehicle to park.

Scattered outside the premises are shops offering hanbok rental. The shop I went, (right across the entrance of the palace) charged around KRW15K for a 2-hour rental, and charged extra for other accessories. They offered free locker rental. If you’re wearing hanbok, you get free entrance. Otherwise you’ll be charged a small sum (KRW3000) to enter the palace.

Every 10am and 2pm, they would hold changing of guards ceremony. The viewing is free.

There’s a small cafe and toilet amenities within the palace grounds if you need a break. Otherwise the palace grounds looked like it’d go on forever. I wasn’t really able to fully explore. Maybe someday, I’d be back to try…

In total we spent about 2 hours there.

2. Insadong

After the palace, we headed for Halal Kitchen for our lunch, but unfortunately, it was closed for renovations. So before we headed for lunch proper, we went for bingsu and coffee at cacadew, which was about one or two alleys down. The particular branch we were at was the Samcheong branch. When in a bingsu place we should eat patbingsu (red bean) bingsu right?

Cacadew’s patbingsu is such a delectable dish. The milk-shave looks like snowflakes is so soft it just melts on the tongue. Topped with a generous amount of red beans, and red bean mochi with almonds sprinkled over it, it has me craving while I edit the photo!

I mean, look at the red beans gleaming in the light…

After the bingsu and coffee, we headed for lunch proper at Osegehyang Vegan Restaurant. Also marketed as halal friendly, Osegehyang offers a decent range of vegetarian / vegan versions of traditional Korean dishes.  This blog has an extensive review on them, so check it out. I had the jajangmyeon for the first time in my life, and I thought it was quite nice. I wiped the plate clean.

We walked around Insadong for an hour or so, looking at the crafts and such. There’s a shop selling children’s hanbok, and some contemporary hanbok – I wanted to get one but I couldn’t find one I liked. There are a couple of shops which you can make your name stamp. I had mine done in around 30 min. Osulloc, a brand of tea from Jeju, also has a branch there – I didn’t tried out the tea then, I tried it another – but Osulloc’s cold matcha was really great! You should try it.

I had coconut juice there, and it’s pretty interesting that the taste was very creamy – like santan.

(+) 4. Emart

An addition to our agenda, our guide brought us to Emart at Gangnam. It’s a hypermart building on its own – it kind of gives off the Giant in JB vibe. We bought a couple of stuff, mine was pretty much the different brands of mineral water because I saw an episode of Run! BTS once, and they were testing the different brands of water… ^^;

(go to 12:19)
https://www.vlive.tv/embed/62664?autoPlay=false

We had dinner at a place across Hamilton Hotel after, and that was the end of Day 2.