South Korea Journal — Day 5–20.8.17
It was a gloomy and a gray day, and that was the day when Vera and I planned to visit the Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁), hoping to get to the palace just before the free daily English tour had begun.
On our way to the palace, we had stopped at a tourist center where we asked about the location of the Starfield Library.
At that time, I didn’t know its name, and the nice woman at the center couldn’t fully understand what we meant and just advised going to other locations.
I felt discouraged for the sole reason that I had not done the proper research.
As we continued walking towards what it seemed to be our first destination for that day, our gaze was caught by a huge inflatable slide that was located in the middle of the main road in front of the palace.
Near the slide, there were numerous white tents which held different activities — in honor of the upcoming winter Pyeonchang Paralympic games. As we walked by and watched people engaging in the activities inside those white tents it started raining. Fortunately, we had our umbrellas (courtesy of our Airbnb owner) — but it rained so heavily that we needed to find a hideout from the rain.
Once the rain stopped, after like 20 minutes, we continued our march and once again our eyes beheld another exciting venue.
We saw a stage where different performers were dancing and singing, I didn’t know any of them but it was fascinating to watch.
We knew that we were on a tight timetable so we decided to stop being distracted, once we had arrived at the palace and our tickets were purchased we had to figure out what to do during an entire hour until the English tour would start.
We had to use our wits to find a way to spend our time wisely.
Not far from the tickets’ booth was a building that looked like a museum — and in fact, it was the National Palace Museum of Korea.
We were quite soaked wet and wondered whether it was a good idea to enter the museum with our drenched umbrella.
We were pleasantly surprised to notice that there was a bag stand where you could put your umbrella and it’d be immediately wrapped by a transparent bag, that’s how we steered clear of the dripping issue.
The museum entry was free of charge and it turned to be quite fascinating as there were lots to see and to read.
I think you need more than one hour to go over the entire museum, in our case we wanted to read as much as we could, which consumed most of the time wandering around the premises of the museum.
While gazing at different ancient objects and sculptures in the museum,
we forgot the time and were almost late to the English tour.
Once we exited the museums and entered inside the palace’s premises, luckily we could easily find the group, as there were not many big groups and it was the only one with an English speaking guide.
Unfortunately, I found it hard to understand most of what the guide said — due to the accent.
It was astonishing to see how the Korean monarchy lived in the past. Most of the facilities were well preserved.
There were a small lake and many trails you could take and just get lost inside the premises of the palace.
There were also small gardens with trees and a few squirrels.
We were wandering around for a few hours — and eventually got hungry so we went out to look for a place to eat.
As a vegetarian I found it hard to find local places to eat at, therefore we mostly had eaten western food which was more expensive.
That afternoon we had a sandwich and a juice for lunch and bought a croissant for later.
Once we finished eating we noticed that it was still raining, and that’s why we had decided to spend the rest of the day at our cozy Airbnb while watching movies from our childhood — such as “She’s the man”.
It was a very calm and peaceful night indoors — I did wish we could spend it exploring the city, yet, it was exhausting being out when it kept raining and we didn’t have specific activities planned ahead of time — at least not indoors type of activities where we could escape the rain.
When I think of it now, we could actually go to a coffee shop with animals, a thing in Asian countries, and spend the time playing with cats or dogs.
I also found, only later, that there is also a coffee place with an artsy touch where you could get art supplies and draw while sipping on your favorite kind of latte or cappuccino.
