This weekend we had a holiday on the 17th, it was Constitution Day, so Amanda and I took off to Seoul. Man, I love the KTX bullet train. Comfy, fairly quiet, and cheap beer at 300kmh is very nice.
We stayed in a part of Seoul called Insadong. It reminded me of an Asian version of Gastown/Old Quebec. Beautiful, but a little touristy. Insadong is famous for antiques, brassware and ceramics. Found a quiet little inn just off the main drag for $30 a night! Small rooms, clean to a fault (they smelled like mothballs), a really nice little old lady who ran the place. It's called the Han Hung Jang Inn.
Amanda had been there before, so when we arrived in the evening on Saturday, she took me to a SUPER COOL restaurant that specializes in pajeon, a green-onion pancake type thing. I had potato pajeon and she had kimchi and cheese. Delicious. We didn't do much that first night besides wandering around the streets looking at all the cool (and some of them VERY EXPENSIVE) things to buy.
We spent Sunday going to as many indoor things as we could, which meant museums. (That night and the next day it was absolutely pissing rain. It's the rainy season now in Korea, so it's been raining reasonably hard for the past week or so.) Our first stop was Jogyesa, a lovely temple which has been running constantly (rebuilt a few times) for the past 500 years or so. I bought some lovely-smelling incense, a bookmark, and a modern Korean tea-music CD done with traditional instruments. Next, we went to the National Museum of Seoul, and after that we went over to the Seoul Museum of History.
We kind of had a problem with our next plan - we wanted to go to the Tea Museum, but it was CLOSED!!! Grrr!!! So, we wasted a bunch of time going all the way there and then all the way back. We ended up going to a terrific performance at Nanta Theatre. They have a sort of "standard" show there called "Cookin' Nanta!" which is not actually in Korean, it's more of a slapstick comedy-pantomime-magic-cooking-percussion with kitchen utensils performance. It was an absolute riot. We were in hysterics for more than an hour.
After that we went out for dinner at another lovely restaurant in Insadong, where we had samgyeopsal. Samgyeopsal is sort of like very thick uncured bacon. It's grilled in front of you at your table, you cut it up with scissors, and then wrap it in lettuce with kimchi and garlic and ssamjang (a spicy bean paste) or whatever else you would like.
Then we went to a really cool cafe/bar sort of place and drank tea and cherry soju for about three hours while having yet another very interesting spiritual discussion. Amanda is nominally a pagan, and I'm a humanist, but we're not interested in attacking, we just like to shoot the shit about each other's belief systems. That's one of the reasons I like her (and all my other friends like you guys) - we're not defensive or on edge about our personal spiritual stuff, can laugh at ourselves, and are open to hearing different explanations, if not necessarily agreeing with them.
The next day we spent mostly shopping in Insadong. I got a lighter that looks like a set of Go-Stop cards, a very loooong traditional Korean tobacco pipe (about 1 foot and a half long!) a lovely necklace, a cool shirt and 2 pairs of pants that FIT ME!! Woo! And an incense burner.
Then we took the Seoul City Tour bus and went on a drive all around the city. It's great, you get 1 ticket and you can ride on this bus all day if you want to, but there are so many sights on its route that you can't really see them all in one day! You can get off at any of its stops and get back on without having to buy another ticket. Anyways, we only went to Seoul Tower to take pix. Then it was time to head back to the train station to catch the KTX and go home.
A great weekend despite the RAAAAAIIIIN!!!
