Seoul

Day 10 – Seoul

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Very tired this morning so ended up having a short nap after breakfast before heading out for more sightseeing in Seoul.

Whilst we were at Seoul Station decided to have a look at the former Seoul Station which is now a historic site Culture Station Seoul 284 (I think this reflects the Korean system of naming and numbering historic buildings). The building is now a dynamic and open multi-disciplinary cultural space that’s accessible to everyone. We saw various architectural exhibits highlighting restoration of other important buildings, exhibits highlighting the history of the old railway station including found objects, as well as some modern art exhibits. The building looks quite “western” in design but there are a number of “eastern” touches in turns of carvings and decoration.

Outside the building is utilised as a performance space. We saw a drumming quartet, one of whose members was a young man with Down’s syndrome. There was also some “happy clappers” as Anthony calls them, Christian singers.

In Seoul we have seen more homeless than elsewhere in Korea and more disadvantaged. At the markets distressingly there were amputees and people with physical disabilities on scooter boards on their stomachs with a begging basket in front. They wore leather leggings to stop their dragging limbs from being grazed whilst around them people walked and shopped.

Caught the subway one stop to City Hall station and the Seoul Museum of Art. The station and subway were much busier than expected. Long queues at ticket vending machines as family groups, couples and singles were out for the day. There is a system, when buying your ticket to a particular destination, where you pay an additional refundable deposit of 500 KWN and get a plastic reusable metro card. There are then lots of machines where you can recharge your card and others where you can get your refund and your card is swallowed. We didn’t master the recharging but bought new tickets each time and got our refund back.

The Museum of Art was another lovely public building and not very busy. We saw the latest acquisitions of Korean artists and some modern art installations. Disappointing shop – a little bit of Korean merchandise but most the same sort you see in other western art galleries (ie Van Gogh, Klimt) and no postcards of the new acquisitions that we saw and liked. Upstairs though, on the the third floor, there was a lovely cafe where Anthony had a blueberry smoothie and I had a green tea latte to lovely views.

Back to the subway for short trip of two stops to Jongak station and Insa-dong street again. It’s far busier today than yesterday with all shops and streets crowded. We were stopped by a couple of girls learning English who asked whether they could interview us. We agreed and were asked simple questions mainly about our favourite Korean foods. They even recorded our conversation on their phones, took a photo with us on both their phones and gave us a gift each! Totally unnecessary but charming.

This time we looked further afield as surrounding streets have a variety of restaurants and tea shops. We had late lunch of bulgogi (a traditional Korean dish of beef marinated in a sweet sauce and roasted on a special cast iron grill and brought sizzling to the table) and a Jeon or buchimgae (a pancake made with seafood and shallot covered with wheat flour and egg and then panfried in the same sort of sizzling iron grill). Delicious but relatively expensive at 55,000 KWN including green tea.

Refreshed for more souvenir shopping – bought two kinds of green tea latte at a tea house and a few other small items for friends and family.

Home before dark. Too full for dinner. Light snacking, packing and blogging ready for morning flight to Tokyo tomorrow!

	Former Seoul Station [Map]		Inside former Seoul Station [Map]
	Subway [Map]		Seoul Museum of Art [Map]
	View from cafe in Museum of Art [Map]		Inside Seoul Museum of Art [Map]
	One of two girls learning English who interviewed [Map]		Insa-dong street on a Saturday [Map]
	Anthony at a traditional Korean restaurant [Map]		Anthony’s bulgogi [Map]
	My buchimgae [Map]