South Korea Day 10: Meandering around Myeongdong

If you search 'things to do in Seoul,' Myeongdong comes up as a shopping destination for both high-end shops, food and clothes markets, and Daiso which provides a wonderland of souvenirs and gadgets to solve all the little life problems that you never knew you had.

There was more to Myeongdong than the opportunity to part with hard earned cash though. Come for a little walk with me to see.

There's the Myeongdong Cathedral with its own fascinating history of push and pull throughout centuries not to mention the reported history collection in the basement, which I didn't get to see. The Cathedral forbids photos inside so I, goody two-shoes that I am, didn't take any despite the peer pressure of other tourists wandering up the aisle snapping selfies right, left, and centre. 

Beyond the Cathedral lay the Sungnyemun Gate, one of the four original gates in the stone wall that encircled the original city of Seoul. The wall here didn't exist any more but the gate was there in all its glory, guarded by serious men in historical garb and regularly traversed by shoals of commuters released from the nearby subway station.

Intricately painted ceilings.

At 10:00 on the dot the drum man beat his drum, the guards snapped to attention, and they all marched away through the gate and down the street, leaving the city unguarded and open to the tender mercies of salary men, commuters, and tourists.

Squeezed between Tussis and Japan, South Korea has a long history of occupation, oppression, and striving for freedom. Monuments to freedom fighters dot the streets, depicting struggle and turmoil.

A clash.

We walked through the Namdaemun Market on the way back to our hotel. Anything and everything was for sale in the market: foodstuffs, army goods, beautifully cut coats, shoes and hats, fish and eels, and on and on it went.

Selling carp cakes, dressing the part.

I found my daily hotteokk.

I went out again in the afternoon to explore theNamsangol Hanok Village, a collection of historic houses that the Seoul local government had moved to one place, the better to preserve them and use the space for education and cultural activities.  

Visitors were encouraged to hire and wear traditional hanbok costume, thereby providing more historic colour. Two little girls in hanbok played traditional games in the open yard, a scene that could have played out around these buildings for hundreds of years.

I walked home along the flanks of Namsan Mountain, where cherry blossoms drifted in the wind and clustered in the gutters. 

I must confess that although the Myeongdong Night markers, bursting with food, waited just outside my hotel door I was far to full of hotteokk to face a proper dinner. I ate a sad meal of convenience store Jelly and fruit, and went to bed to the sounds of gangnam rap buskers in the street below.