Day 9 (part 1) - Breakfast at Gwangjang Market and Jongmyo Shrine Tour

- May 26, 2013

Previous: Day 8 (part 2) - Wesak Day Lantern Festival and dinner at Gwangjang Market

We sleep quite late today because the guesthouse bed and room is not really comfortable. There are no curtain in the room and this season, the day bright around 5:30AM. Around 6:30AM, it is very bright that we hardly able to sleep with the shine to our room. Also the bed is not really comfortable which make us lack of sleep. Then we wake up around 9:00AM and feel very sleepy. We prepare and walk to Gwangjang Market (Kwangjang Market). This place full of food and traditional stuff. If to buy traditional stuff, we will need to come around after 12PM-6PM. Other than that, they usually close except for the food which open from 9AM-10PM.

The moment we enter the food area, this ahjumma keep calling us to her stall. As we had been here in Korea for 9 days and we haven't try "Sundae" yet. Also here not only popular of bindaetteok, it's also popular with "mayak kimbap" or small size kimbap. We sat here and start ordering.

Ahjumma give us kimchi and two chopstick. This is quite normal where mostly all Korean stall or restaurant they do provide kimchi. Then the ahjumma give us a plate of tteokbokki and mayak kimbap. See the size of kimbap is as small as the tteokbokki which I can finish 1 roll in 1 bite.

Then we also order Sundae (Korean black pudding). It is a kind of food that they stuffed with rice, noodles and various kind of ingredient to the cow or pig's intestine. They stuffed till it looks like almost bloated and they steamed it. Therefore it looks pretty ugly and disgusting but it actually taste very good.

We also ate some odeng with soup. (fish cake with soup).

After our heavily full breakfast, we walk to Jongmyo Shrine. As we purchase the integrated admission which enttile for all palace, we might as well walk all the palace. Walk from Gwangjang market to Jongmyo Shrine just took us about 10 minutes. It actually just across the road. When we arrive, the English tour started so we have to wait for the next tour. The next English tour will need to wait another 2.5 hours so we follow the Chinese tour which going to start in another 45 minutes. While waiting, we tour around the garden and we saw a park where all ahjussi playing "Go chess" or called "Wei Chi". This is one of my favorite games where I use to play in my Android. It is hardly able to find someone know how to play Go Chess among my friends.

We then proceed to Jongmyo entrance for the Chinese tour. As mention, the center walk way is forbidden for human to walk as it believe the spirit of Royal ancestor will walk on this path so human are prohibited.