Changdeokgung Palace

So we were too tired to write last night (again) so now I'm writing about yesterday (Sunday here). The first thing we did was meet up with Will's other aunt, but this time it was Will's aunt on his dad's side. We've actually met her before as she regularly comes to the United States since she has two daughters that live there. She's really nice. First she drove us around the President's House. It's not so much a house as a gigantic compound and the security is very visible and quite funny. There are literally guards every 100 feet and you can't drive too fast or too slow. She's try to slow down to tell us something and they were suddenly whistling at you not to slow down. They give you the evil eye the entire time too and were peeking into the car to make sure we didn't look like North Koreans. Then we drove up this mountain that was near by and her crazy driving and the constant turning was starting to make me sick. She also loved catching air on speed bumps but would slow down at painted lines. The best part though was at every junction on the mountain there were these guards that were literally pointing these HUGE guns that looked like oozies at you with your hand on the trigger. Apparently in the 1970s, the North Koreans tried to invade and assassinate the President by climbing over the mountains so now they're prepared. Afterward his aunt took us to Insadong which is the arts/cultural area and she took us to this super duper fancy Korean restaurant where we had the best Kalbi I've ever had! It was our favorite meal of this entire trip! It's no wonder though because when we got a peek at the bill it was $180 which shocked me since the food around this town is usually so cheap!


After lunch she took us to see Changdeokgung Palace. It was originally constructed in 1405 as the palace of the kinds but it's since been destroyed in a fire 3 different times and restored over and over again. It was really cool!

Afterwards, she dropped us off at the Lotte Shopping Plaza where we of course had to check out the food court. It's a lot like the Hyundai department store where there's the insane food court in the bottom floor. Here I had these yummy flavored mochis and I also tried an American cupcake. I wanted to see if they tasted the same so of course I had to get a red velvet! Surprisingly the red velvet was actually really good and the cream cheese frosting was pretty spot on!

Later we went to Myeongdong which is a trendy area with lots of stores and street vendors. Again, seriously, Seoul has endless eating and shopping. My mom would love this place.

We then went back to Insadong which is where there are tons of art galleries and handmade crafts for sale. This was my favorite part of Seoul since they sell lots of cool and unique stuff. I got a hand-sewn purse made out of funky fabric and it was similar to Crafty Bastards in Adams Morgan for those who are from DC. The picture below is from this miniatures museum where they had all these super tiny replicas of food and stuff.

Later we had a delicious dinner, just the two of us! It was at this place called Lamb Land that Will had read about on a Korean food blog. It was Korean BBQ but with lamb chops which is a more rare thing in Korea. It was very tasty!! Our waitress was very amused with us and told Will that he was a cool guy when we left. That was cute especially since she was our mothers' age. More tomorrow!