Day 5: Expedition to the Seoul palace

Today we had no official activities planned, so it was decided to explore Seoul itself. This meant that we left around 11:00 to our first destination of the day, Gyeongbokgung. This is the old palace situated in Seoul, which was used by the Korean Royal Family in the past. Since it was Gaecheonjeol (National Foundation Day of Korea) a lot of people were in traditional clothing. The old palace was very open, since it had been burned down multiple times and only some building had been restored. After walking around for a while, we decided that we were also curious about the other palace situated in Seoul, so we headed in the right direction with a lunch break on the way.

We passed by a Buddhist temple which held a ceremony at the time, the League of Legends “park” (which was actually an internet café situated on the third floor) and eventually ended up at Changdeokgung and Changgyeonggung. These palaces were a lot less open than Gyeongbokgung, since they had been preserved better and were lived in much more recently. After a while we decided we were up for a drink, so we went to get lost in Ikseondong Hanok Village, which offered a lot of different shops among small streets.

After enjoying a local craft beer, we wanted to try some Korean food, so we found a restaurant which offered a classic Korean BBQ. The chefs showed us what we exactly had to do and then handed the utensils over to us. It was great, but the chefs thought we didn’t do a good job, so they took back control a couple of times. After the delicious meal, we went to a Karaoke Bar (actually Norae Bang in Korean), which ended up being a Karaoke room without any drinks. In the end, we still ended up singing for over an hour, but we had to go back to the hotel to make sure we would get enough sleep.