Golden Week Day 3: Rubber Seoul

Our destination on day 3 was Chonggyecheon, where we continued our theme of doing a lot of walking (hence the title). Chonggyecheon is a stream that cuts through northern Seoul that used to be covered by a highway but was turned into a giant walking area as part of an urban renewal project.

This is apparently a re-creation of an old painting of a royal entourage that went along with a king to visit his father's tomb. There's a lot of it. One nice touch is that they had speakers (tastefully hidden in the bushes) that were playing the sounds of horse hooves and medieval-sounding trumpets.

We stopped for lunch in the food court of a high-rise shopping mall that had a view of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza. It appears to still be under construction, but is already giving the neighborhood sort of a sci-fi feel.

 Quinn ordered a spicy squid dish.

 I tried the bibimbap -- a rice bowl topped with vegetables and an egg.

Right in the same neighborhood is the Seoul Heunginjimun, a big ancient-looking gate. Unfortunately we couldn't get too close to it.

 We stopped by the hotel room for our mid-afternoon stretchout, then went out to take a look at Namdaemun market, which isn't far from Myeongdong. Quinn and I aren't really big shoppers, so the endless booths of cheap jewelry and luggage didn't appeal so much. We do like food, however.

These are tteokbokki, cigar-sized rice noodles served in a sweet/spicy chili sauce. Yum.

I'm not sure what these are called, but they're awesome. Big skewers with tteokbokki, sausage, and crab (probably imitation crab) meat, wrapped in something. We're not sure what they were wrapped in; I thought it was some kind of processed fish product similar to chikuwa; Quinn thought it was thin fried tofu like one would use for inarizushi.