An afternoon in Insadong

My teammates and I spent the afternoon in Insadong yesterday. It's a charming part of town, where the streets are lined with art galleries, the occasional bookshops, tourist-kitsch shops, and little antique stores. It was a great place to wander, where we could duck into stores to avoid the on-and-off drizzle.

The main street is wide and filled with tourists but the side streets are charming and lined with little teahouses that smell like kimchi. In fact, the subway smells like kimchi too. Well actually, I think it smells like rotting cabbage, but my colleagues pretend not to see (or smell, as the case may be) the difference. I could spend hours wandering around here, venturing into small alleyways to find the singing businessmen that my guidebook tells me exist here. Unfortunately, we only stuck to the main street, although that in itself had plenty to hold our attention.

One of the street stalls was selling these little owls. I thought they were adorable, but I wonder what one would do with them. I think I'm too practical to simply use them as decoration - they would just sit around catching dust.

Another guy hadn't even set a blanket or an umbrella out for his wares. There were simply these little stone bowls filled with flowers. I loved the simplicity of it, though. Other shops had beautiful (but extremely expensive) Goryeo celadon for sale and a puzzling amount of wooden chopsticks, considering that the country usually uses metal ones. There were also beautifully lacquered boxes inlaid with mother of pearl, painted fans, and intricate bookmarks that I fell in love with.

Towards the end of the street, we stopped in a train-themed tea shop, complete with the telephone poles that line the sides of tracks and train seats. The only thing I didn't like about the place (and this is true of many Korean restaurants) was that people were allowed to smoke in the restaurant.

My job manager, Peter in his Al Gore '08 T-shirt

There was a huge variety of teas in the shop. My cinnamon tea was really fragrant and had pine nuts floating in it, but was too sweet. The ginger tea was interesting, but again too sweet. The best tea we tried was the rose tea that Peter ordered. It was subtly flavoured and had beautiful roses floating in the pot.
By the time we came to the end of the street, it was 4pm and we were starving. My teammates were heartily sick of Korean food by then, so we snacked on hot dogs (the western variety, not actual dog) and McDonalds. McDs Korea has a Harry Potter theme going on, so the staff were dressed in robes and wizards' hats. I thought it was really cute. Interesting things to try on the Korean McDs menu: Bulgogi burger! :)