Namsangol Hanok Village and Much More

This afternoon, on my first full day in Seoul, I visited the Namsangol Hanok Village, which isn’t too far from one side of the base of Namsan (“South Mountain”), where I was this morning. After visiting it, I then took in a few quick hit sights.

I had something booked later, so I needed to go to places where I could cut the itinerary short if I had to duck off quickly. I’ll publish a separate post about that later activity.

As I explained in my morning post, I’m super tired after not sleeping much on the plane and then having trouble sleeping at my hotel here last night. Consequently, this and the next post will be rushed. Prepare for brevity and bumpy, error-prone writing. You’ve been warned.

Namsangol Hanok Village

The walking route from Namsan to Namsangol Hanok Village took me through a very attractive, peaceful park with non-flowering trees, flowering trees, flowering bushes, and some water features. Namsangol Hanok Village is at the far end of that park from where I entered it.

Namsangol Hanok Village is a collection of restored traditional hanok buildings from Korea’s Joseon period, a dynastic kingdom founded in 1392 and lasting for more than 500 years. It contains a collection of simple, quaint, one-level buildings with tiled roofs.

I’d read about Korean hanok villages when I was planning this trip. This wasn’t the image that formed in my mind of hanok villages before I came. To be honest, I wasn’t especially impressed with Namsangol Hanok Village. I didn’t dislike it. It was quaint. But I wouldn’t rate it as a “must-see.” I’ll probably be visiting some other hanok villages during my time in Korea. I’ll let you know how they compare to Namsangol Hanok Village.

Namsangol Hanok Village is now a cultural space. For a fee, you can try your hand at a variety of traditional Korean crafts. I believe there’s a separate fee for the materials for each of the crafts. I didn’t try any.

There is no charge to wander around Namsangol Hanok Village, which is what I did.

More pictures from Namsangol Hanok Village:

Seoul City Hall

After Namsangol Hanok Village, I went to the Seoul City Hall. It wasn’t much more than a half-hour’s walk. I had some time, but I hadn’t ridden the subways here yet. In my opening post from Seoul yesterday, I mentioned that I loaded a Tmoney card, a stored value card for transit here, into my Apple wallet. But loading it with cash isn’t straightforward for foreigners. I’d added some money to it while I was still in Toronto. I wanted to test it out to make sure it worked while I wasn’t in a rush, so I could try to resolve any problems then, rather than waiting until I needed to get somewhere fast. So I took a subway part of the way to City Hall.

It worked like a charm. Wait. Do all charms work flawlessly? Exactly what work do they do? And what, therefore, is deemed as successful work for them? Never mind. You know what I mean.

I tapped in and tapped out at the fare gates at either end of my subway ride. It accepted the card in my Apple Wallet without any hitches. So, yay that!

The current Seoul City Hall is a wide building designed to resemble a tsunami that’s about to crash down on the previous city hall in front of it. The previous city hall is now the Seoul Metropolitan Library.

Inside the new city hall, there’s a green wall that, according to my walking tour app, GPSmyCity, is “adorned with over 70,000 plants across 14 species, recognized as possibly the largest indoor vertical garden globally.” It’s quite impressive.

In front of the new and old city hall, there’s a grass-and-wood-floored public space.

Kitty-corner across a busy street from the new city hall, there’s an outlet of … wait for it … Tim Hortons. This morning, I saw “Toronto” printed on one of the windows on one of the observation decks of Namsan Seoul Tower. And this afternoon, I saw an outpost of the iconic Canadian coffee chain, Tim Hortons. It’s like they say, you can take the decrepid old man out of Toronto, but you can’t take Toronto out of the decrepid old man. Or, if no one has ever said that, I have now.

Deoksugung Palace

Deoksugung Palace is right across the street from Seoul City Hall. It’s the smallest of five grand palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. However, it became the royal palace after the other five burned down in 1592.

There are a few traditional buildings of varying sizes, none of them huge. But there are also a couple of neoclassical buildings, one of which was built in 1910. The neoclassical buildings contain museums. One was closed for renovations and a display changeover. The other was open, but entry was only via a guided tour. The last English-language tour for the day had started sometime before I arrived.

There are some small, lovely gardens in the Deoksugung Palace compound, including one with a small pond. It’s quite attractive.

Oh, there’s a small fee to enter Deoksugung Palace. Or, rather, there is a small fee except for non-senior adults. We get in free. Like at the Namsan Tower, the ticket-seller insisted on seeing documented proof of my ancientness before she would grant me that privilege. So, that was nice.

More pictures from Deoksugung Palace:

Jeongdong Observatory

Jeongdong Observatory is on the 16th floor of a city administrative building, close to Deoksugung Palace. The picture windows in a small cafeteria up there provide views from only one side of the building, namely, looking down on Deoksugung Palace and the city beyond it. It provided a good view of the palace, but if you’re pressed for time in Seoul, I wouldn’t recommend bothering to go up there.

OK. I really have to end this now. My jet lag and lack of sleep are getting the best of me. And I still have one more entry to post today about a tour I signed up for this evening. Regular readers can almost certainly guess what sort of tour that was, but I’ll attempt to maintain some suspense for now.

Stay tuned for that, as I rush it out, probably not doing it nearly enough justice, so I can try to get in a little sleep tonight.