At Gyeongbukgung, Seoul

If you're starting to get bored by photographic evidence of me in the same navy stripes and pinafore, I'm here to tell you that this will be the last of the instalment. It's just that we covered so many places in a day! 

Living in 126Mansion gave us the super ability to jump from point A to B to C, D and E all in one day. If you can't remember me in this outfit, we started the day here in the main streets of Samcheong-dong and later here in Bukchon Hanok Maeul. When hunger finally kicked in and overpowered the wanderlust (because you can have that even while you're traveling), we went to the famed Tosokchon Samgyetang 토속촌삼계탕  to have what its shop is named for - Ginseng Chicken! The family restaurant is housed in a traditional building, but spacious enough for separate dining rooms. We had lunch later than usual so we missed the insane queuing for the specialty, as recalled by several other blogs. Because we had lunch later than usual, we jumped straight into finishing the bowls of chicken soup that no one remembered to click the camera trigger.

While the sun started to set around 4 in the afternoon, giving us a nice and softer glow, we took the metro the Gyeongbukgung Station and stood amazed by the palace walls, outside of the main attraction itself. Back when I was 11 (a good 10 years ago!) we had come as a family with a tour group and paid for tickets to enter the palace, but most of the rooms as I remember were cordoned off to the public.

As the evening came we set out once again for Insa-dong, which is within walking distance. Insa-dong is a semi-traditional quarter with Ssamzigil mall as its main attraction, being loved by the young Seoulites. The mall houses quirky local shops with rather pricey tags (apart from the poop bread 동빵; poop bread rules), with a open air top floor where couples hung out. Outside of Ssamzigil, Insa-dong remains to adhere to tradition, with shop signs in Korean Hangul instead of English, which is pretty cool to see when you're used to signs like Starbucks and Etude House, but here they appear in Korean instead.