Korea Day 6

On this day I met up with my Korean friend Sunny and we visited Anguk, it is quite a popular tourist attraction, which lots of chinese tourists looking around and taking pictures, as per usual. Sunny took us to a shop that sold traditional korean tea, and it was delicious. Kind of like chinese soup but sweeter and cold, if you grew up in a chinese household you would probably love these teas! So healthy and so delicious. There was a fair few of traditional tea places and they are definitely worth a try. 

We came across this love alleyway, it appears to be quite popular and I guess Korean's are so romantic I should have expected this, it is so ridiculously cute; also if you have not heard there are plans for the French Love Lock Bridge to be closed off for adding more locks due to the immense weight of the locks, so if you want to make a romantic gesture I guess this might be the place. 

Me being a silly tourist fell into one of the tourist traps. These guys were incredible though, singing and almost rapping the procedure of making these sweets. Once I had bought them and taken them home I was told that they sell these sweets everywhere in Hong Kong, so great..

Toilet Selfie

Ddong Poo Shaped Cakes, unfortunately after eating a massive lunch I did not get the chance to try it, but there are lots of reviews of it online, and it genuinely looks quite tasty. Who hasn't dreamt of eating a poo cake anyways?

Sunny in the traditional korean dress! 

This little outside shopping mall had lots of little independent boutiques. They were all so cute, but the prices not so much, definitely another tourist trap but one that is actually worth it. 

The MASSIVE LUNCH. Rice cake is my favourite favourite korean food, and I literally could have exploded from eating so much at this meal. I miss rice cakes!

Wearing our traditional korean dresses and taking sticker pictures. As you can tell we did not have time to decorate or think of any cute poses haha.

Korea Day 5

The fifth day consisted of a little visit to Gyeongbokgung palace which is surprisingly cheap. A ticket to all 4 palaces is equivalent to around £10 if I remember correctly. Unfortunately I only had time to visit this one palace. The day was boiling hot and humid and the sun beating down, way to go in not bringing an umbrella! The palace ground was huge, now of the buildings that big, but amazing nonetheless. 

The grounds are reminiscent of national grounds in England, full of trees but a little drier. I am sure without all the tourists this place would have been more beautiful, (including me), it was just so difficult to catch any image without capturing tens of others in it.

A teacher was taking around these cute kids, he was so enthusiastic and you could tell he loved his job. I think taking kids on historical trips like this make the job so much more worthwhile.

Palace grounds leading towards mountains, so beautiful away from the city.

This palace consisted of a couple of museums, which had rather strange artefacts and other displays. This museum showed the evolution of birth in Korea, which I guess is pretty cool, but kind of random.

As it hit 12pm, we had just arrived in time for a little ceremony, where the guards march and move around. In this boiling heat I salute them for being able to wear so many layers!

The cute ahjummas!

The youth stone or something along that, walk under it and you will forever remain youthful. The group of ahjummas giggled as they entered. SO CUTE.

Korea Day 4

Day 4 of Korea meant it was time for Jasmine to leave us for her exchange room. That left me, Livia and Odilia to explore by ourselves, heading to several different locations. And this is our "matching shoes" photo, which took several takes believe it or not.

If you look close enough at the photo, you can tell most peoples heads are bent downwards, this is because they were using their phone, I would say a good 80% of people would be on their phones at any given time in any location, that is Asia for you!

This is incheon, which is more developed area of Seoul with a wider range of different cuisines from different parts of the world. This area is known as the areas where most expats live/eat/hang out. 

Comedian Hong Suk-Chun restaurant, on this street alone he had two restaurants and apparently several more in multiple locations across Seoul. 

Cereal Bar, a supposedly very famous cafe

Us being very indecisive we just decided to slip into one of Hong Suk-Chuns restaurants, and what we did not expect was to see him come in. Hong is the only openly gay comedian in South Korea, so he is a pretty big deal, but his personality and his english was just perfect. (Contrary to what I believed before, most koreans have pretty bad english, so it was a nice surprise when he came bounding in with perfect english)

The little free sides they give

I believe this was the wheatbuck noodles, and YUM. It is probably more of an asian thing, but I love anything weird like this, although saying that I normally do not like cold things but over the past year or so my picky eating has gone away, (thank god).

Sorry not sorry, sweet and sour chicken. Wherever whenever.

A young artist using tape to make a frog, the hipster life in Seoul is REAL. 

And then we moved on to the famous GANGNAM. We kept to the underground shopping rather than exploring what would possibly be a massive part of Seoul, and even the underground shopping was massive. We did not even get to finish shopping, and dude did we spend more than we had expected to.

The underground shopping mall was so big it has this type of seating area! And here is Odilia and Livia pretending to act all normal.

Stumbling across a traditional Korean restaurant for dinner. Sitting without shoes, (I had holes in my socks, which probably wasn't the most pleasant thing for other customers, but hey ho)

POSER ALERT

Traditional Korean, cold meat, and so many different sides to choose from. And again the cold buckwheat noodles, to die for.