A Day in Insa-dong

I don't remember when we went here, but I think is was back in August. Erik and I took a trip up to Seoul to check out Insa-dong. This is kinda the artsy part of Seoul. It used to be where all the painters and craftsmen hung out and a big antique area during the Joseon Dynsasty. I guess after the Korean War it started to become more of a craft/tourist area and today they are renovating a lot of it. It is a good place to find Korean antiques and little art boutiques, and see artists doing calligraphy and fan painting.  

This place is called Ssamziegil. It is a four floor shopping center, with over 70 stores. The shops line an interior court yard, and there is also a rooftop garden.

Here is a guy painting fans. You can either pick one out that he already did, or he will make a custom fan for you.

There was also a few calligraphers out.

The guy on the right is waiting for him to finish so he can put their seal on it.

It is the early afternoon, and the street is just starting to get crowded.

This place is called the beautiful tea museum. They have a huge selection (of really expensive) tea, a cafe, and a small tea bowl exhibition. 

It was pretty hot out, so we opted for some green tea pabingsoo. It was really good! There were all kinds of nuts in the middle, and green tea poured over ice shavings.

This is one of my favorite pictures! Outside one of the antique shops were all these sculptures. I just like the African sculpture wearing a traditional Korean hat!

And to Erik's delight, there was an antique bookstore.

This is another antique shop.

I don't think one of these would fit in my suitcase, so I decided not to buy one =P

Here is a funny kitten outside of a restaurant. I'm not really sure why they had a cat tied to a chair with a ribbon.

The street continued to fill with people as the day went on. I think that we got stopped like four times to be interviewed by Korean students for a school project. Their tracherm ust of told them to look here fore some foreigners to interview.

We decided to go to a random gallery, and found this map exhibit. It was kinda cool actually.

They had newer maps...

...and old maps. It is kinda funny to compare the two.

A side street where we took a rest and got out of the crowd for a while.

Me doing and overly exaggerated pose.

Back at Ssamziegil at night.

Another calligrapher. It was cool to watch the different ways the artists worked and how that made their calligraphy style so different. The older guy was very careful and was really thinking about what he was writing. This guy's brushwork was really fast and more spontaneous. As soon as he had finished, he suddenly just ripped up his work, and started yelling. Then he started over again. 

When we were looking at the map, it suddenly started to rain. The streets cleared really fast! Everyone was hiding under shop doorways.

Out final stop was the suicide place of some general (can't remember his name) Erik was really curious about this place so we went to look for it. It is kinda weird because it is just this plaque in front of a bank. There is this kinda grotesque pile of something cast in bronze and a sword. 

The next day we did a bit of shopping in downtown Seoul, but we were both kinda tired and not in a shopping mood, so we just had lunch and headed back to Gumi.