We are staying at Seoul 53 Hotel for 2 days. It is located in Jongno-Gu. The hotel is not quite comfortable but it is in the excellent location. Jongno-Gu area is quite interesting but the road is very narrow. It is a great choice for travellers interested in museum, culture and sightseeing.
We visited Gyeongbokgung Palace which is a very famous attraction in Seoul. At the time of writing it is ranked as Top 2 thing to do in Seoul on Tripadvisor!
Gyeongbokgung Palace
Gyeongbokgung Palace is the largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. It is known as the most beautiful palace out of the five palaces in the city. The entrance fee is only 3000 won (about USD$2.60) per adult.
It is a nice place to visit if you are interested in history, otherwise, you will be yawning like me. Honestly, it is a bit boring for us. It is a good place to feel the culture and get to know the tradition here, but do not spend too much time here if you are not interested.
There are some people acting as old royal guards. They are so cute 🙂
If you want to come, I recommend to check the opening hours beforehand, e.g. Gyeongbokgung is closed on Tuesday. Also, the other palaces are not too far away so you can visit a few of them in one day if you are interested.
We spent less than half an hour here and decided to go back. When we were walking back to the hotel, we found Insa-dong.
Insa-dong
Insa-dong is a very interesting place! I like this place. It is a popular place to visit in Seoul especially with foreign tourists. It has a lot of shops and galleries. It sells a lot of traditional things and fine arts. It is big and not too crowded. I wish I could have spent more time here.
I was holding a coat, and my mother said that I look like pregnant!?? =.=”
Only one thing that we do not like here. We walked into in a restaurant (right side on the photo above). There was no price printed on the menu. There were no other customers at the restaurant. We bought a glass jelly noodle (takeaway) and it costs 25,000 won! A normal meal here cost between 5,000 – 7,000 won, so it costs 4,5 times more than the normal price. And the worse thing is that the noodle tastes terrible. If you are coming next time, I recommend not to go to the restaurant with no price information as it might be very expensive – mainly aiming at tourists.
In the end of today, I realised that the GPS on Google Map does not work properly in this location. I suspect that it is because the road is too narrow and complicated. The Google Map will not be able to calculate the distance and suggest a route for you. And sometimes when you type in the location name it just does not show up properly.
My recommendation is that always save your hotel’s location on Google Map BEFORE you go anywhere. It is quite easy to walk back if you do so because most of the roads are connected (although it does not show on Google Map). It is very useful because it is extremely easy to get lost in Jongno-Gu area. It is very difficult to ask direction from other people because most of the people here do not speak English.
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