More pictures from Gyeongbokgung Palace

I promised you some more pictures from the palace I visited on Friday. The other options for spending my time right now apart from writing in my blog are: writing essays for my home university, reading the assigned chapter and writing a reading response paper for the class on Wednesday, studying Korean for the placement test and working on a project (still need to print some stuff for it though); long story short: it was a very difficult decision, and here are some more impressions from the palace :)

In Korea, they don't have our Western codiac signs but Chinese codiac signs: 12 different animals, depending on the year you were born in. I'm a Tiger (I like it :)
On the palace grounds I found these cute statues of all the codiac signs. This year is the year of the rabbit by the way, so you can see many pictures of rabbits and rabbit-merchandise everywhere in Korea.

Chinese Codiac Signs: Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig

Chinese Codiac Signs: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit

Chinese Codiac Signs: Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep

The statues were all arranged in a circle and you could look up which sign you are on the big black stone in the middle.

Circle of Codiac Signs

I was also very impressed with the art on the walls and other patterns I could find.

Some art depicting plants I found on the walls

Random patterns

Next to the palace is the Folk Museum, I didn't have time to go inside though and just looked at the pagoda from the outside. Unfortunately you are not allowed to go up the steps and get a closer look.

Pagoda next to folk museum

At the folk museum they also have an outside exhibition where you can see traditional style Korean houses and artifacts. The stone in the front of the picture was originally located close to one of the rivers and measured the water level.

Water level stone in front of Korean traditional house

For many tall foreigners, Korean doors and especially low-hanging signs (for example in the subway) can be very dangerous. In the palace, I found a door which was even too small for me :)

No it's not a window! It's definitely a door!

One of my favorite pictures from the palace is this one with (I think) Japanese women posing in traditional dress in front of the palace:

Japanese women in front of Korean palace

That's it from Gyeongbokgung, but don't worry, there are plenty of other palaces in Seoul (and Korea) and I'm bound to go sightseeing again!