Seoul Saturday afternoon recap

On the drive back in from the DMZ we went through the center of town.  I snapped this picture because I thought it was fun:

I'm not sure if that is a permanent piece of art or if they are already prepping for Christmas.

When we got back to the USO I headed out to do a little shopping.  My staff recommended the Insadong area for a place that I could find a lot of locally made items.  South Korea has some great wooden items, handmade paper, and ceramics.  I had a lot of fun walking through the shops and seeing the vendors out on the street.  But I have to say that even more than the shopping I enjoyed seeing this part of Seoul.

There are all of these great alleys off of the main street.  Most of them have restaurants but there were also some shops.  I had so much fun just wandering up and down them.  There was also a really good use of space.  Almost all of the buildings had second and third stories that were being used for restaurants.  Since the weather was so nice they all had their windows open.

One of the items I really wanted to buy was a piece of local art.  There were a lot of actual galleries on this street that had some beautiful work.  Some of it was really expensive and some of it was very reasonable.  Just near the end of the street I saw a man with a bunch of pictures and he was in the process of painting a new one.  He had some really great pieces so I bought a neat mountain picture with some blues in it.  I know it sounds odd but I really like it.  Here he is painting:

When I was done shopping and wandering around it ended up being about 5:30 pm.  If you recall, I started my day at just after 5 am so was pretty pooped.  I took the subway back to the hotel and had an early night.