Return to the Palace

As expected – or rather hoped – there was beautiful sunshine again today. It was still cold, but even more beautiful for it. I mean, who is surprised by the cold? After all, it is winter.

Today we went to a place we already knew. Who recognizes it?

Correct: the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which we had already visited on the first day.

This time, however, the focus was not on the palace itself, but on the accompanying program: the training of the guards and the official changing of the guard. It was very cool to watch as they marched in formation through the sunshine in their colorful robes – accompanied by music and drums, including powerful hits on a large drum. And each one carried at least two weapons, which made it all quite convincing.

Since we initially assumed that the ceremonies would take place in the palace itself, we bought tickets for admission again. Since we already had tickets, we, of course, went inside again – and quickly realized that during our last visit, we had perhaps seen only a quarter of the entire area. And that was also the part that was almost the most boring compared to the rest.

The palace itself was built in 1395 and served as the seat of the then king. Gyeongbokgung means "the palace blessed by heaven" and its location was deliberately chosen so that it was at the center from several perspectives. During the Japanese invasion from 1592 to 1598, the palace was unfortunately burned down, but was rebuilt in 1867 to revive the grandeur of the Joseon dynasty.

While wandering through the grounds, we were very surprised by the sheer size of the palace – especially since we thought we had seen most of it the last time. We saw various smaller buildings, such as the residence of the Crown Prince, the royal kitchen, and a separate kitchen for banquets, etc., one of the royal fountains, and also a pagoda in the middle of a body of water, which was probably used as a retreat for the queen.

However, the size of the palace mainly results from the area, as the individual buildings are partly rather small...

After the visit, we passed by statues of the 12 zodiac signs and the National Folk Museum of Korea but then moved directly on – how could it be otherwise – to a café nearby to have a coffee and a light meal.

And since there happened to be another café nearby that the coffee nerd wanted to visit, we went straight to the next coffee. That also had its charm since the neighborhood seemed a bit older, and the buildings were nice to look at.

With about 17 grams of caffeine in our blood, we then followed the nerd's heart again and landed in a store for cards. But not maps, rather trading cards, like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, One Piece, and – the main reason for our visit – Magic: The Gathering.

After a little browsing, we first went back to the hotel to relax for a moment, as the next program point was not until the evening: the Seoul Winter Festa, which sounded like a big light show according to its description.

In the end, it unfortunately was not quite what we had expected. Instead of a light show, it was more like a type of K-Pop concert – with Korean songs I didn’t know and also English Christmas songs. Although I’m still not sure whether they were sung in English or Korean.

We were just about to leave when suddenly people with glowing banners appeared from behind. That looked much more like a light festival. And behind them followed more colorful glowing figures that performed a small show.

After that, we moved on, as there seemed to be more a little further on – and indeed: there awaited a small Christmas market with gift stalls fitting for the season and a food festival with corn dogs, chicken skewers, kimchi pancakes, and much more.

In the end, the Seoul Winter Festa was definitely worth a visit for us, even if it didn’t seem like it at first.