This is the main compound of the palace...
This is the throne room...
The king's private audience room....
As well as various other quarters in the palace...
Seoul is now a modern metropolis but the palace is still pleasing on the eye amongst modern skyscrapers....
As it is amidst the mountains which are even older than it is....
Notice the concrete markers in the picture above? Apparently they were used to indicate officials' rank when they gathered before the king. The higher the rank, the closer one stood to the monarch.
Dinner was at Insadong, a popular spot to stroll, shop and enjoy a meal.
In particular, we ate at a small restaurant. Egg and tofu soup....
As well as spicy chicken on a hotplate....
Both come with rice. At around or 6,000 - 8,000 Won, I think the price was very reasonable.
After dinner, we continued strolling down the main throughway of Insadong...
And came across a building which seemed dedicated to hip, trendy and arty stuff...
This is a wall where people take pictures of themselves....
And this is a wall near the toilet where people express themselves through grafitti. One of our group who passed me by on the way out of the toilet told me that he had seen a sculpture of a penis but I could not find it...
After that, we continued walking down and began augmenting our dinner. With this (the meat attached to the sticks at the right of the first picture)... Some kind of fish snack (the close up is of one which is half-eaten) which comes with oh so delicious soup...
And these... Chicken and sausage skewers which come in barbecue or spicy sauce...
And these!!!!... Which Ryan, one cool dude from China, bought and ate with relish... If you cannot guess what they are, I would ask that you get a clue from the name of my blog... Either that, or, as was suggested to me, they are larvae... Aaron took a bite and thought it gross. I am more objective and will say that if I did not know what they were and someone put one in my mouth, I would say that it tasted something like fried baby squid...
There were just so many foodstalls by the roadside and it was a pity that we were too full by the time we came here to try some Dragon Beard Candy... I reckon Aaron and I would have ate more of this than the err...garden species...
After snack time, the boys decided to get some exercise at a 'baseball arcade'. 1000 won gets you a crack at hitting 17 shots at baseballs fired from a machine. I didn't try because I have suspect shoulder but I must say that the metallic "tng" sound of the bat striking the ball sounds quite therapeutic such that I can see why some the boys took repeated goes at this thing...
And that was about that for the day as we headed back to our hotel, extremely tired but quite satisfied...
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