Insadong with Friends

If you still remember my posts about Bukchon - this happened on the same day. Our labmates/friends took us out to a lot of places in the Insadong area and they would never fit in one post.

Supposedly, this place is really famous, but I don't even know what it is...

A funny mall with handicraft items, traditional crafts, hanbok purikura, cafes, teahouses, Jetoy store...

Do you know about the locks at Pont des Arts in Paris? Lovers who cannot afford to travel to Paris to vandalize this famous bridge (and it has even been forbidden in Paris to put any more locks on it) have started putting locks and other weird things on whatever bridge or fence they see. Seoul came up with a smart idea to cater to their needs while preserving routes, bridges and monuments intact - they create places where you can hang your memorable item without damaging anything important. That's why there are Christmas trees with locks and cell phone covers around N Seoul Tower and these plastic tags in Insadong.

Mini time capsules and poop snack post-its.

Charcoal clothing.

One of the top 5 teahouses in Seoul is inside the mall!

Isn't the police bus adorable? I've never seen police buses - we have horse-riding police in the Czech Republic and they have police boats in Venice, but it was my first time seeing a bus.

Rice cake museum

If you have some time to visit traditional food markets, please please try to sit at one of the stalls or in a restaurant to try some authentic unhealthy but delicious Korean food. All kinds of pancakes are a safe choice, because they're not very spicy or unusually tasting. You will also experience the Korean food queue, as these places are insanely popular, especially at lunch/dinner time. 

Also, this is the time for justice - wherever there are male managers, a girl's life is easy. But these shops are mostly run by women, and I saw how the manager of the restaurant where we sat completely ignored our friends who were trying to get us more drinks, but she brought the orders of two young and handsome boys in a milisecond. And they even called her an ahjumma while our friends were very polite.

This is actually not Insadong but Cheonggyecheon-ro where we had a couple more street food snacks that we gathered from the market and street vendours in Jongno and Myeongdong.

And to finish the day, we had some drinks and a "German" cake in Mango Six, which I don't really recommend because it's really expensive and the food and drinks are just average.

Shopping

It wouldn't be me if I didn't buy some stuff on our way, including both food and inedible items. The first jar is fermented shrimp paste, which I desperately wanted to bring to Europe, because I presumed it would be impossible to get in Lund and it's an essential ingredient in several recipes. Unfortunately, the marts sell it only in giant jars. In the end I managed to get a small one in a cheap supermarket somewhere in Insadong - I paid around 2400 Won for 150 g. 

I suppose this is as close as Korea gets to lucky packs. In the Jetoy store, they had several packs of different items for an absolutely amazing price, so I got one. I plan to keep some of the items while others are gifts. There was a folder, note pad, notebook, stickers, mouse pad, pen, neck string to hold keys/cards and a card holder that winks. For 10 000 Won!

Rice cakes! I'm not a big fan of Korean rice cakes as they are really dense and sticky, but these are a lot better than the supermarket ones.

I really needed a tumbler and persuaded by my friends' testimonies, I opted for a Starbucks one even though I dislike the chain otherwise. I have to say that the designs they have for Korea are beautiful and the tumbler has really good quality, especially for some 14 000 Won.

 

Yours truly

Vita