Bukchon Hanok Village

Yesterday was one of the few sunny days during rainy season, so Minji and me went to Bukchon Hanok Village for some sightseeing. I was really happy to see Minji, my mentor during the semester, again.
Bukchon Hanok Village is an area of Seoul close to Gyeongbokgung Palace where many Korean traditional houses have been preserved. The streets are smaller and the atmosphere is quite different from the rest of busy Seoul.

One of the small streets

I wouldn't mind living here

People actually live in those old houses and I wish I could take a look inside. I guess they might be pretty modern from the inside and just keep the ancient appearance on the outside.

Me and Minji

There is a recommended walking course through the area which you can finish in 1-2 hours, depending on how fast you walk and whether you stop by in some of the many small museums. There are lot of very specialized museums around and we went to two of them.
The first one was the Seoul Museum of Chicken Art. I just wanted to go there because it sounded so funny but it turned out to be really interesting. The museum was really small but I still enjoyed the time there (the fact that it was air conditioned contributed as well). A man, who I guess might be the owner, was really kind and explained everything to me in English. The chickens exhibited on the second floor are mainly Kokdudaks, wooden carved and painted chickens which used to be placed on coffin carriages. They were put there to scare away ghosts. I also learned that the five virtues of the chicken are: intelligence, strength, courage, heartedness and trust.
On the first floor are many figures, statues and paintings of chicken from all over the world:

Inside the chicken art museum

The second museum we went to was the ToyKino museum, displaying, who might have guessed, movie-themed toys. This museum was actually a little bit disappointing. It is really too small for the entrance fee (4000 won), there is no additional material available at all and the display of the toys is rather loveless.

Entrance of the Toykino Museum

Since it was so hot (I of course even got sunburned), we had a refreshing stopover in one of the small teahouses along the road.

I had a cold five-tastes-tea which is supposed to taste like all five different tastes at once. I've had it before and it was really good. This one was really sour, which apparently is more authentic but also a lot more difficult to drink (believe me, Minji had a good laugh after every sip I had because I couldn't properly control my facial muscles anymore).

Sauer macht lustig :)

I think that the smaller the streets and the steeper the stairs, the more beautiful the atmosphere.

Beautiful small street

Steep stairs - traditional

Steep stairs - modern with Cheshire Cat

We had a great time in the afternoon and finished our tour with amazingly delicious stone-oven pizza at a very small special restaurant.

Best pizza in Seoul!

Waiting for the pizza

Yummy...didn't eat Rucola in ages!