Bukchon Village.

I had another tour lined up for Thursday.

 This tour was of Bukchon Hanok Village, where I was staying.

 My guide, Cho Hee Wang, was very passionate about the preservation of the village.  He showed me place where the water from the palace used to run off and the people who lived here would wash their dishes.

 Hee Wang was not so pleased about a mural like this.

 One interesting spot was an area where a very popular Korean drama was filmed.  Apparently, the Japanese LOVE K-dramas, and flocked to this house.

 I wish I would have bought a souvenir, especially of the Korean Harry Potter up there.

 After seeing that they elicited this kind of enthusiasm, I made it a point to start watching some of these K-dramas.  And even in a foreign language, they were pretty entertaining.

 All of Seoul is hilly, but Bukchon is situated in an especially steep part of town.

 Even the "Be Quiet" signs are cute in Korea.

 Here's a view from the top.  This was easily my favorite part of the city.

 We cut down a side street to walk to what looked like the edge of the mountain.

 Indeed, it did drop off quickly and you had to take some very steep stairs down to get to another part of town.

After my tour ended, I had some lunch and headed back to my guesthouse because it was cold, dreary, and snowing.  Come on, snow in April?  Where was I- Wisconsin?  The heated floor in my hanok did feel pretty good, though.

 Determined to not lose a moment more of my vacation to bad weather, I set out back around the village to visit some of the traditional artist's workshops that are common.  In this one, I learned how to make traditional Korean knots and made a bracelet for June.

 This friendly guy talked to me for a while about gold-leafing.

 And I spent a long time at the embroidery museum.

 After a crummy afternoon, the weather cleared and I headed out for a long walk.  I came upon Tapgol Park, just as it was about to close.  I did get to see the Wongaksa Pagoda, a ten-storied marble pagoda that was built in 1467 on the site of a Buddist temple that no longer exists.  This pagoda was declared National Treasure No. 2.  (Number 1 is Namdaemun Gate- the gate that has it's own lego model and was burned down by arsonists in 2008.) 

I walked down Jong-ro and watched everyone come out of work and counted all the American fast food chains.  (They are all there.) Despite my instance to only eat Korean food, I did give in when I saw the one restaurant we did eat at in India- Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I think India did KFC better, but my Zinger Burger and fries were still pretty good.  

Only a little over 11,000 km back to DC?  That doesn't seem so far.

I hug around until nightfall at Cheonggyecheon River so I could take a night bus tour of the city. 

I didn't get any good pictures from the moving bus, but I didn't get to see all of the bridges that cross the Han river lit up, which was pretty cool.

As I walked back to the metro station, I was surprised that the streets were still as crowded with people as they were at 6pm.  Seoul never slows down.