Insadong (인사동) Adventure Time

Yesterday, I went to 인사동 (Insadong) with my good friend from Penn, Sally! Luv you, girl. As a bit of a forewarning, this will be a relatively long post… Sorry bout dat. It’s mostly pictures! Insadong was really cool though so hopefully it won’t be boring.

Sally and I met up at around 1PM (we were supposed to meet at 12:30 but I’m an idiot and got off one subway station too early so I was late…). Sally had heard about this relatively famous restaurant in the area that specializes in pig feet (족발 “jok bahl”). It sounds gross/weird but it’s super Korean. Plus they cut it up and made it look pretty. It was actually really good. She told me that I can’t be a Korean person without eating pig feet at least once in Korea. We also got Korean style soba noodles (in case the pig feet wasn’t good heheh)

pig feet dish. so aesthetically pleasing.

all mixed up mmm so good

After lunch we tried to make our way to Insadong. We looked on a map and it looked like we had to walk a really far way, but I guess Korean maps aren’t drawn to scale very well or things are a lot closer together than we’re used to, so we ended up walking really really far from where we wanted to go.. heh. It was fine, though… it was good exercise, amirite? Eventually we made our way to the main road.

Insadong is one of those places that’s trying to maintain traditional things in the face of Korea’s rapid modernization. All the signs and stuff were written in Korean–even signs for Starbucks or other places that are usually written in English. Anyway, Insadong has a ton of really artsy and cute little shops that sell all these handmade crafts or jewelry. As we walked down the street, we stopped in a bunch of little shops and had 타래 (tah-rae), which is like strings of honey… which doesn’t really make sense. It kind of looked like a cocoon. It was made of stringed honey with some sort of nut-sugar mix inside.

Suh-tah-buck-suh koh-pee (Starbucks Coffee in phonetic Korean)

Making 타래

chocolate 타래

We eventually made our way to Ssamjigil (쌈지길), this cute little shopping complex type of place. They have all these really cute shops that sold tons of things, like handmade jewelry, paper products, ceramics, snacks, clothes, shoes, etc. As soon as you walk in, there’s this food stand that sells 똥빵 (ddong bbang). We read about it on someone’s blog and made it our mission to find this place. Luckily it was in plain sight as soon as you walk into the complex. hehehehe. To maintain some semblance of dignity, I’ll let you figure out what 똥 is on your own. It was essentially a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste and walnut. It was actually really delicious despite its name and general appearance.

똥빵! ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅎㅎㅎㅎ

Ssamjigil

On the basement floor of this complex, there’s a bunch of places to do crafts, so we decided to have arts & crafts time. There were a ton of different options, including but not limited to glass blowing, fan painting, pottery (not available that day though ㅠ.ㅠ), mother of pearl jewelry making, and wood carving. We chose to do mother of pearl jewelry first and then glass blowing. The jewelry making was pretty cool; you could make a ring, necklace, keychain, mirror, etc. and it all relatively cheap. I made a keychain and Sally made a ring. There’s something about making arts & crafts that’s really calming and nostalgic. ‘Twas good fun. After we made our jewelry, we moved over to the glass blowing/molding station. This guy uses empty soju, wine, beer, Coke, etc bottles to make pretty art things. It’s a pretty cool way to recycle, in my opinion. We both used soju bottles. I have no idea how I’ll take my artwork home with me but it’s really pretty and the guy working there gave me a free fake flower to put in it so I really hope I can figure out a way to bring it back to the states without smashing it.

You’re never too old for arts & crafts

my keychain!

soju bottle glass molding

yaay fun fun

Glass bottle art

After making our art works, we walked around the whole complex and stopped in a few of the shops. Everything was sooooo cute and artsy. We eventually made it to the top and went to this “love cafe” (I think that’s what it was called) where couples or friends hunt these little messages all around the shop. Naturally, we made one and hung it on the fence. We also bought matching giraffe earrings! Ah so cute.

ㅋㅋㅋ

Love cafe

Kpop music boxes; one of the thousands of cute souvenirs you can buy in 인사동.

After we made our rounds in Ssamjigil, we went to find this ddeok store in the area that I read about on a different blog to get ddeok (gelatinous rice cake) and bingsu. The store was really cute and they sold all different types of both traditional and modernized ddeok. The green tea bingsu we had was reeeaallly good and super cheap (~7,000 won).

ddeok store

green tea ddeok bingsu

the ice was shaved frozen green tea. so legit. There’s also sweet red bean, green tea ice cream, nuts, and ddeok.

After eating bingsu we walked around some more. We also started looking for this really cute and authentic looking tea shop that we found online. It was at the end of a super remote alley so it took us foreverrr to find, but we eventually made it and had some tea. It was a little overpriced but the cups were huuuge and it was really unique and the atmosphere was really cool.

Tea shop that was almost impossible to find

my citron iced tea. cool stuff.

After our tea, we walked around yet again (there’s so many shops and art galleries around here) and, at around 8PM, we went to get dinner at a Korean BBQ place. The restaurant we went to specialized in beef–specifically, 갈비 (galbi), which is beef short ribs if I’m not mistaken. I had been craving 고기 (“goh-gi”, which means meat) for sooo long so it really hit the spot. It was really fancy and the waitresses had this system of timing how long the meat has been cooking at each table so it didn’t burn. So good.

고기 사랑해

yayayayay korean bbq

the waitress gave me a weird look when I took this picture…

After dinner, we got our palms read, because, ya know, why not, right? The lady didn’t speak English so Sally translated for me. Basically she told me that my palm said that I’m a kind of person who has a hard time saying no to people, and that I work hard and have a lot of endurance. She also said that I will definitely get married before I turn 30 (HAH) and that I’ll have a lot of husband-luck (i.e. I’ll find a good husband) and that, after we’re married, I’ll be very supportive of him in all that he does. She also said that I’m hardworking in school but my major might change very suddenly. Also, my palm apparently told her that I will work in a profession that’s centered around caring for others. Some of the things she said were pretty accurate and I’m not sure how she got that but it made me sort of believe in these types of things… It was really fun though and it was only a few thousand won.

Sorry this post was so long! It was a long day yesterday. It was soooo fun though and I’m glad Sally and I finally got to hang out after 6 weeks of me and her being in Korea at the same time. ^^

That’s all for now! I’ll post again laterrr.

안녕!