August 25, 2010

Honeymoon Trip to Korea: Day 5

Posted in Travel tagged cable car, Changdeok palace, Gyeongbok palace, N Seoul Tower, Namsangol Hanok Village at 3:53 pm by reffine

That day was a bit drizzling, as the weather forecasted was raining whole day.. Woke up around 10am, took bath and prepared to have our breakfast cum lunch nearby around Seoul guesthouse..

Changdeok-gung & Gyeongbok-gung

Our itinerary for the day started with sightseeing around the nearby palaces, Changdeok-gung and Gyeongbok-gung, as it’s just nearby walking distance from Seoul guesthouse.. Actually there are 5-6 palaces around Seoul, but we chose to visit these 2 palaces which are mostly recommended by the travelers in TripAdvisor forum..

Have checked the website that to enter Changdeok palace we need a guided tour instead of browse around the palace ourselves. So after finished eating, we’re rushing for the Changdeok palace tour with an English-speaking guide at 1.30pm.. We’re just nice reached there slightly on-time as the guide was just starting her explanation about the palace history..

The female guide brought us around the specific areas in the palace and gave a brief explanation in English to each of the area we visited. It’s still a bit drizzling that time so must step carefully as the road was quite slippery and wet..

Some areas are restricted for visitors and mostly we just browsed around the outside area, not allowed to enter inside the room for maintenance reason due to aging of the buildings.

There is a secret garden with a small pond inside Changdeok palace which was used only for Korean royal family at that time.

At the end of the palace tour, the guide told us about a unique phenomenon, there’s a tree branch which grown and shaped like a monkey face.. interesting hor hehe

Once we finished the Changdeok English-guided tour, we continued our journey to another palace nearby, Gyeongbok-gung.. Here we can browse around the palace on our own as it’s not as restricted as Changdeok-gung..

At Gyeongbok palace, usually there is a “changing-guards” ceremony every afternoon in front of the palace entrance.. I think we have missed the ceremony, but we still can manage to take some pics of the guards in front of the entrance gate

Got similarities between the two palaces that we visited, the main difference is on the functional purpose which can be seen in the rooftop design colour..

At Gyeongbok palace, there’s rental of Hanbok (Korean traditional clothes) for visitors to take picture.. but too bad on that day when we went there it was closed due to rain..

Think hubby felt abit boring, after sometime browsing around Gyeongbok palace.. we got some arguments which now I forgot why we got the arguments.. He decided to go out from the palace wanted to go back to the guesthouse while I still wanted to browse around the National Folk Museum of Korea which located outside Gyeongbok-gung main gate..

The museum is a 4-storey museum which each level contains different Korean history and traditions from time to time with the displayed artifacts related to it. Unfortunately I didn’t take pics inside the museum as it is quite dark inside..

After finished browsing around, I tried to contact him again.. he was sitting at the nearest Starbucks cafe.. we decided to meet up to take the metro subway at Gyeongbok-gung station which located just beside the museum..

As both of us felt a bit hungry already, we tried to to find some place to eat for lunch again haha.. Wondering around till we decided to go in to one of the resto there..    The resto selling porridge, we just placed the order by pointing pictures on the menu..

Namsangol Hanok Village & N Seoul Tower

After that we continued to the next destinations of our itinerary for the day, Namsangol Hanok Village then followed by a night at Namsan Tower (N-Seoul Tower)..    ^^

At Namsangol Hanok Village there’s some night performances where the tickets can be bought on spot, but as our plan for the night would be going to N Seoul Tower, we skipped the performance.. Had asked the person at the main gate of Namsangol Hanok Village for the direction to N Seoul Tower.. I knew from the map it should be near from there..

Unfortunately the person couldn’t speak English, but he’s kindly enough to draw us a map to get the bus to N Seoul Tower.. but as we scared we lost our way, so we decided to go back to the MRT exit which we went out and follow the direction from internet to go to Myeongdong MRT hehe..

From the direction I got in internet, we can walk from Myeongdong MRT exit to the cable car station. Apparently what we saw on the map which we thought quite near as stated around 10 minutes walk, it’s actually took us 20 minutes more as the path was slope uphill.. After walking sometime, we still couldn’t see some signs which indicate that there’s a cable car station, so hubby asked one of the worker there for the direction.. he told us to walk straight again then turn right at the end.. fiuh.. still a long uphill road.. haha >.<

After thanking the person, we continued our “hiking” and finally.. we saw a main road, but we’re not sure where to go on.. a lot cafe’s and resto’s along the main road.. we saw on the right path of the main road, it’s like a corner.. so we tried to walk to the left path but it didn’t feel right either.. so we went back to go and following the right path and finally we found that cable car station to N Seoul Tower hehehe…

We bought a return trip cable car, and queued for our turn to go in the cable car.. Actually after we bought the ticket then I found out that we could take bus to go back to Myeongdong station, so actually one-way trip of cable car is enough.. >,<

There’s another way to go to N Seoul Tower besides by cable car or bus, you can walk via Namsan Park to reach the Namsan Tower.. That time was already dark and we wanted to enjoy the night scenery view so we just took the cable car to N Seoul Tower ^^

It was very cold up there.. we’re both freezing and my camera was low-batt somemore.. quite few restaurants and foodcourt there.. we browsed around the place, got Teddy Bear Museum and other attractions which not to our preference.. Got ask the dinner at the top of the tower, it’s very expensive.. we both decided not to take dinner there eventhough a bit tempting hehe

There’s a laser performance in front of the tower at 8pm.. while waited to watch, we browsed around to an open deck where we can view the night scenery of Seoul.. At the open deck, there’s a place where most lovers put their pair of padlocks attached together.. which I think symbolize unbreakable commitment maybe.. Unfortunately we didn’t bring any padlocks with us..

When the laser show begun, we just watched for a while and then decided to go back and look for dinner around Myeongdong area..

Apparently the way back was much more shorter than when we went up hehe eventhough it’s the same road.. but downhill is much much better than walking uphill haha.. actually when we were looking for the way to go to cable car station, we passed a resto which looks nice that’s why on the way back we decided to take our dinner there ^^

After finished our dinner, we went shopping around at Myeongdong night market.. so many things to see and I felt so excited.. suddenly I forgot about my tiredness hehehe.. ;p Luckily no more rain for the night hehe..

We went back quite late almost 11 to 12pm to Seoul guesthouse.. still need to prepare our things before taking a rest as we need to check out on the next day.. Next 2 days we would be moving to Gangnam-gu, around Southern Seoul area..

~.~

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