Seoul revisited

Another couple of days in Seoul proved pretty hot, with temperatures getting up over 37 degrees, and humidity very high. This limited what we were able to do, to a certain extent, although we got moving early on our first day to do a walk along a section of the old city wall. There is an 18+km path that follows the entire wall boundary, our intention was to do somewhat less that that, with a little loop from where we were staying into the city centre. It all started off well enough, at the Gwanhuimun gate, but after relatively easy navigation, James took a wrong turn and we ended up walking in circles on a walking path near Seoul forest. Few visual landmarks meant it took some time to find the way out of the maze and there were a fair few steps added to our count. once back on the path we headed up towards Seoul tower, with a lot of stairs as the wall climbed the hill. Helpfully, someone had kept a count in chalk on the staircase, and we topped out at 662 stairs climbed. Brutal.

The views from Seoul tower (almost) made up for it, and allowed us to see a side of the city we hadn't previously experienced. If it wasn't pushing into the mid-30s and higher, it would have been a really nice way to spend the day. 

Lunch was at Namdaemun markets where we ducked down an interesting looking alley called "Hairtail alley", where it looked like there were some little restaurants (do you call them restaurants if they seat about 10 people max?). Turns out that "hairtail" is a kind of fish, also called cutlassfish. The little place we ducked into was run by a couple of Korean old women who told us what to order and then served it up. It was super tasty, although we had to figure out the trick of separating the flesh from the bones, which were numerous.

After that, it was back to our airbnb for some cool and rest for the rest of the afternoon. Dinner was at a local street food market - Gwangjang - that Gillian had come across on a Netflix food doco, and she was thrilled to be able to get a seat at the stall of a woman famous for her mandu dumplings and handcut noodles. Naturally, we tried both...

It was blazing hot again for our final day in Seoul, which was slated for catching up with long time friends Hyuck and Namsu. There was not so much "doing" in this case - more a lot of time talking. Which was great and the way it should be really. We spread our time around tea shops and a very popular restaurant in Seoul that seemed to have nearly as much seating outside for people waiting as it did inside for people eating. The food was great and worth the (short, in our case) wait. A stroll back along the Cheonggyecheon stream kept the temperature down about 5 degrees lower than everywhere else, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing and packing (for the move on to Taiwan), only emerging to get ice creams from the little conbini below our apartment for dinner, given that we were still full from lunch!