11 May 2012
There are many places of interest in Seoul that are closely located around the central area of Seoul. Ideal for a walking tour of central Seoul.
We started our tour in the morning at the Bukchon Hanok Village, located near Anguk Station, Exit #2. There are many things of interest in the Hanok Village but we planned to located some hanoks that were featured in some of the K-dramas.
The Hanok village is located between the Gyeongbokgung (Palace) and Changdeokgung (Palace). In this trip, we decided to skip the palaces as we had been to the Gyeongbokgung before.
From the Bukchon Hanok village, it was a short walk to Insadong. Insadong is a lively place with many stores and pushcarts vendors selling all sorts of Korean traditional culture and crafts.
It is also home to numerous restaurants, cafes and street food vendors. So this was a good place to have lunch. While in Insadong, we also checked out the Starbuck outlet, reputed to be the only one in the world with its signage in Korean language and not “STARBUCKS”.
From Insadong, going southwards, we went to the Cheonggyecheon stream, near the Samilgyo bridge. This stream is quite a feature in Seoul as a highway used to run over it. The highway was demolished in 2005 and the stream was rebuilt into a beautifully landscaped water feature, running below the street level.
The entire stream was too long for us to explore as part of a city walking tour. In any case, it was interesting to walk along some parts of the course of this stream that cuts across central Seoul. Samilgyo Bridge would be somewhere near the midpoint of the stream.
We went upstream or westwards towards the Cheonggye Plaza in Sejong-ro. Sejong-ro road actually leads up to the Gyeongbokgung. Cheonggye Plaza and Sejong-ro area featured some interesting sights for visitors such as the fountains, statue of King Sejong and statue of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin (Lee Sun Sin).
Cheongye Plaza is the start of the Cheongyecheon stream but it would mark the end of our walking tour for the day.
More details of our walk in the next few posts.
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