Day 13 – Hangin’ with Emily and The Palace

Today Emily and I left early so that we could run to her apartment with some of her stuff and have some mom and daughter time. We left the boys in the apartment to have a nice slow morning after yesterday’s hot trip to the island.

Her plants! 

The upper right corner window over the bakery is hers!

 We dropped off stuff at her house and grabbed iced lattes from the Paris Baguette which is on the first floor of her apartment building…lucky her! We grabbed a bus and headed for the most amazing area I’ve seen so far…the Dongdaemun fabrics market!  It was seven floors of stalls selling everything from notions to textiles. Each floor had a different theme…first floor was yarn, cross stitch, and some notions. 

Next floor was mostly notions (I bought buttons…for a madrigal costume I’m working on and some for just me). Next floor was dress fabrics and Hanbok fabrics (I bought two yards of two different colors!). The next floor was textiles like wool and upholstery, and the next floor was a lot of excess bolts of everything. We never made it to the top floor. It was HUGE!

I ended up purchasing two yards of a blue and a green Hanbok fabric. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but they are beautiful! I also bought some cute buttons for a future project.

We were getting texts that the boys were hungry, so we headed out and met them at an amazing bakery café that Emily loves. I’ve never had such unique scones. We got a blueberry scone, a basil pesto scone, a garlic cream scone, a strawberry crumble, a double chocolate scone and an earl gray scone. YUMMMMMMM We left with very full tummies.

After breakfast/brunch, we took a bus over to Bukcheon hanok village where there are very old houses on tiny streets that people still live in. It is very picturesque. We stopped at a Hanbok rental store and decided to rent a few for an hour to really get into the Korean culture! (Well, Em, Pete and I did it…Steve was the official photographer).

We got our hair done and soon we were heading out for some photo opportunities. It had already become so hot outside, that we decided to go to tea in an air conditioned tea house! That was a brilliant idea. We ordered Omijacha, which they say is like tasting five flavors all at once (Omija means five flavours and cha means tea). And because we ordered it iced, it was like drinking a lightly sweet grapefruit slushee (at least that’s what it tasted like to me!) And it had two pine nuts floating in it as well. Perhaps it was how overheated I was, but that was some of the best tea I’ve ever had!

Came across this on our walk. It
indicates a new business has opened!

After tea, we walked around a bit more before heading back to turn in our rentals. Once back in our clothes, we headed over to the Gyeongbok Palace. They were having a changing of the guard ceremony when we got there, so we were able to watch a bit of that before buying our tickets and heading in.  The palace is lovely. The first building you come to is the throne room (of course). There is a gold dragon on the center of the ceiling over the throne which is absolutely beautiful.

Bullet holes in the palace left over from the Korean War!

The Throne Room

Above the Throne

The next set of buildings you come to are the administration buildings where most of the work was done. The building in the middle had no heat, but the two buildings to the left and right were more fully furnished with floor heating. They would start fires under the building through these squares in the foundation, and the heat would run across the building and out the chimneys in the back. Korea had the first heated floors!

Where the fires would be built

After running under the floors, they would vent
out the back chimneys

The next set of buildings at the back were where the king and queen slept (separate buildings of course).  The queen had a garden in the very back where Em says the king and she would secretly meet. I guess that’s how you get little princes and princesses! Not sure why it was so secret though.

Many people walked the grounds in rented Hanboks!

The Queen's residence 

Looks pretty comfy even today!

You can see the garden behind the living quarters

The garden

After touring the grounds, we found a café where we bought water (did I mention how hot it is?) and got a bit cooled off before heading back towards the busses. We were going to walk through Insadong headed for the subway, but it was just too hot and we wanted to go back to the apartment and shower.

After regrouping at the apartment, we headed out to meet Emily’s friend (and college roommate who also works as a teacher outside of Seoul) Haley! She came in to meet us for dinner. We headed off to a local place that has all you can eat BBQ. We got the pork belly (which is basically thick bacon), and enjoyed that plus kimchi, radish circles, bean paste and lettuce. You get to cook it all yourself at the table. We could keep going up to the buffet for more pork and sides, and we did! Plus, they had PEPSI…we are never offered Pepsi.

After dinner, we parted ways with Pete, Emily and Haley. They were all going to play at the PC Bang (gaming café) and then spend the night at Emily’s apartment.

Steve and I walked back to the apartment and enjoyed our early night out of the heat. Sometimes you just need a break from constantly going!

Walking the streets at night

The path across the river by our apartment

Crossing the path!