Yesterday we checked into our traditional hanok room:
It’s very much a b&b operation, though we didn’t elect to have breakfast here since the neighborhood has many coffee shops and restaurants, not to mention small art galleries.
Today we walked through the 2nd and 3rd royal palaces (apparently 1st royal palace was believed haunted, what with young princes meeting untimely ends, Richard II style). The hanok, incidentally, is located in a neighborhood between the 1st and 2nd/3rd palace grounds.
We did get a glimpse of 1st palace, but it suffered (more) during Japanese occupation of 1910-1945, and security presence was high due to protests so we didn’t hang around. BTW the mountain behind the gate is one of the significant mountains that formed kind of a defensive ring around Seoul.
Along the way we came upon this re-created stream that runs through the middle of “old” Seoul (now office towers), and walked along that for a while.
That’s the end of my trip, though my wife spent another week in Vietnam.
Out and About 