Seoul: Bukchon Hanok Village and Hadongkwan

The forecast called for rain on our second full day in Seoul. This meant one thing for the Missus.....get an early start. We decided to head back to Bukchon Hanok Village as we believed (rightly so), that we wouldn't have to deal with the hoards of tourists. A Hanok is a traditional Korean house, and this collection of structures between Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, once the lair of high ranking government officials, Bukchon Hanok Village is full of little alleyways, with these traditional structures, some of which date back to the Joseon Dynasty.

It's a wonderful place to wander in and out of the alleyways during the early morning. Even though some of the structures have been turned into cafes, shops, galleries, and guest houses, there are still many residences here. Which is why we felt really bad seeing the place mobbed with loud tourists....geez, can you imagine if you lived here?

  If you've been reading our little blog long enough; you'd know that the Missus loves Hachiya Persimmons and was mesmerized by a tree full of them! She stood under that tree for a good ten minutes trying to will some of the fruit to fall. Alas, there was to be no divine intervention here. No fruit falling from the heavens. So we left Bukchon Hanok Village, taking some of the quieter back alleyways back to the hustle and bustle of the morning rush.

The wind was picking up and there was some intermittent drizzle as we got back to Jong-ro.

We were getting hungry and headed off to another place from my "list". Walking back to Myeongdong, over the Cheonggyecheon Stream.

As you could tell from my previous posts; I'd been seeking out classic Korean dishes and down the street, across from Myeongdong Cathedral, stood another shop I wanted to try.

Hadongkwan has been in business since the 1930's and serves basically two things; suyu (boiled beef or pork slices) and gomtang, a clear beef soup.

The drill here is that you order and pay at the register first, then have a seat. The woman working looked mighty tough.....she looked at me and said "you big...." and then "small" to the Missus. In other words she ordered for us. And frankly I wasn't going to argue as I'm fairly certain she had a ruler to whack me over the knuckles had I disagreed.

As we sat, she walked over to another table and grabbed the bowl of sliced green onions right off it and brought it to us....the guy was still eating! We couldn't help but chuckle...what if he wanted more green onions? I guess he would have had to deal with her and we were fairly certain who would come out on top.

The kimchi here was very good, not salty, mild fermented flavor, very clean tasting. Ah yes, clean tasting, that also describes the gomtang, in spite of the nice fat, and collagen infused broth, it tasted very clean......sea salt, rice, and a ton of scallions for me. Just like Japan, scallions are considered a veggie here. And, as much as I joke about the woman running the front of house, she was very efficient. When she saw how much I enjoyed the green onions, she nodded at one of the servers, who instantly refilled our bowl....same with the kimchi!

Very nice, straight up beefy flavors. This might seem simple, but getting things right is deceptively hard.

Hadongkwan
10-4 Myeong-dong 1-ga
Jung-gu, Seoul

After breakfast, the Missus decided to do some shopping and we wandered the side streets of Myeongdong. And while we saw a very familiar sight.....

Though the Missus really couldn't find the cosmetics She wanted. So we headed to the huge Lotte Deprtment Store....this being the main branch.

Unfortunately the department store didn't open until 1030, it was just getting to 930. We noticed that the Lotte Duty Free store was just opening so we decided to head on over......to the feeding frenzy! Sheesh! It was a huge rush of Darwinistic, every woman for herself, Chinese tourists. We started walking around a bit and noticed many of the women dragging along huge suitcases. Naturally we thought that these folks were heading off to the airport and just making a stop along the way, until we noticed that once items were purchased, they'd open the empty suitcases and fill them up. We saw women literally buying a thousand dollars worth of cosmetics and dumping it into a empty steamer trunk! Yikes! This was just too much for the Missus and She needed to leave.....

We decided to head back to the apartment for some calming tea, before heading back out.....of course crossing Cheonggyecheon Stream yet again. This time we walked on down and along the stream for a bit. A nice, relaxing walk.

We meandered through the back streets parallel to Jong-ro. There are a ton of restaurants down those streets and alleyways. I came upon one which caught my eye.....it was a hot pot place....I could tell they served goat and lamb. But what was that creature between the goat and lamb?

Well....perhaps I really don't want to know. Because I think we've been down that road before......

Comments

[kat]

what a lovely place to explore!

[nhbilly]

Beautiful, nice to see no cars blocking the beautiful architecture.

[Kirk]

It was Kat!

That's so true Billy!

[Junichi]

Oh the Chinese tour groups. When I was in Japan last year saw a bunch of them in Ginza by the bus load. All buying boxes and boxes of electronics, clothes, perfume and candy. Good for the economy I suppose.

[Kirk]

The one jarring thing about those tourists is how loud they are, which really makes them stand out because Japan is pretty quiet Junichi.