After a lovely early dinner/late lunch in Insadong, we decided to head out to Itaewon, the expat ‘party central’ of Seoul. It was, of course, raining. And also Halloween, which although something I have never paid much attention to, is rather a big deal in a country that seems slavishly to follow American trends and definitely a big deal in an area of Seoul frequented by an awful lot of foreigners. As a result the evening was a little strange. I think the best way to explain it – which is unfortunately impossible because I simply don’t have enough pictures – would be a crazy collage of witches and monsters, devils and princesses, crowded pavements, spiderweb decorations in clubs, queues of people everywhere, rushing and wandering, and lots and lots of rain. Given the craziness it was, unsurprisingly, a rather late night, including a 2 hours wait in the rain to find a cab home. We both, consequently, slept in on Sunday morning.

Which was bliss. I was staying in the guesthouse at Anna’s university (where she lives and teaches) and the room was warm and comfortable and a lovely place to wake up on a chilly but (marvellously) not-raining morning.

Eventually we did get and after a cup of coffee, headed out into the world. We were off in search of some sort of yummy early lunch. We initially tried the area around where Anna lives but clearly the local places had all decided that it would be pointless to be open on a Sunday morning if your clientèle was students, so we hopped a bus and went in search of somewhere else. This was the first time I’d really seen the city without rain and looking out from that bus at the beautiful streets and houses, all settled into mountain slopes and dotted between tall trees, this may have been the moment when I started to fall a little in love with Seoul.

We got off the bus and went to look for a restaurant Anna had previously spotted that she was keen to try. It was a very pretty building serving, from what we could gather, Korean food. At the entrance, however, we got caught up in a crowd of other people and it all seemed very busy so we quietly slipped out and headed on down the road, keeping that for another day ‘yet knowing how way leads on to way’…

After walking for a bit we spotted a Chinese restaurant that looked interesting. We also spotted a branch of my bank, which made me happy as I could draw a little more money, just in case. Along the road in front of the Chinese restaurant and the bank were flowers in pots along a fence. This is a fairly common sight here. Korea does pavement gardens and most of them are pretty and, at least at the moment, full of flowers. This bit of pavement had flowers in some of the pots but alternated with them were – I kid you not – very pretty ornamental lettuces or cabbages.

The restaurant was on the second floor and we were led past a mini-garden with water features to a quiet table looking out over the road – a particularly pretty view – and brought jasmine tea and the menu. We decided to try the set-menu (minimum two people). Sets are fairly common in Korea and this one turned out to be a multi-course feast. We started with Wanton soup, followed by Dimsum – some prawn, some spicy vegetable. Next they brought out a seafood hotpot each – packed with all manner of sea creatures and delightfully rich. This was followed by one of my favourite Chinese flavours, sweet and sour pork. Along with this we each got a big bowl of onion and soy sauce noodles. Finally, dessert – sesame-coated sweet balls of something with the consistency of marzipan and a dark, sweet centre which may have had something to do with beans. And of course coffee. A very good meal, far too large to finish everything, at a very reasonable price. We went home happy and settled down to let the lunch digest. At that point, we split up for a while, Anna to sleep and me to wander around her campus with my camera.

I have mentioned before that I have a deep love for university campuses. Apart from the fact that they are generally (barring RAU) beautiful, there is a feeling of being away from the real world that I struggle to find anywhere else. As with so many campuses, this one is tree-filled and full of attractive sets of buildings and has a tendency to have strange sculptures dotted around, sculptures which I’m sure are very meaningful but which generally turn quite quickly into just another quirk of the campus, as with, for example, the bicycles at Rhodes.

This chilly autumn afternoon meander took me along just the roads of the campus. There is a very pretty mountain behind it, but I wasn’t feeling energetic after the large lunch, and anyway, there was so much to drink in, enjoy and photograph right there. I stopped for a few moments and watched a soccer match on astro, enjoying the sensation of normal students doing normal things on a Sunday afternoon. At one point, I found a water-feature near the entrance of the university complete with a statue of two dragons almost intertwined over a large, round ball. All around me, and looking up at the mountains, the autumn colours were brilliant and beautiful. Walking along past some benches, I was shouted at by a large crow, trying to make me go away. At some places on the campus, it is possible to look out over the highway passing below and other, autumn-coloured hills across the little valley. I wandered for about an hour and then headed back to the room.

By this time, Anna was up and we set off again to see a little more of the city. We did attempt to see another palace but it was closed, so we walked through a market instead. This market, like so many here, is really just an alley between buildings, or a road with hawkers on it – I’m never quite sure how to describe them. The shops sold everything from underwear to party-hats and the hawkers a range of socks and shoes and street-foods. We walked for a while, popping in and out of shops, and then decided to grab some early dinner at a Korean restaurant. I had crumbed pork-cutlets with cheese and spent most of the meal fighting with the chopsticks. I really am trying to become proficient with chopsticks but I still feel silly whenever I pick them up.

And then it was time to head home. We got a little lost and – because I was cold and ready to give up – took a taxi home instead of continuing to look for the bus and spent a very happy few hours drinking coffee and chatting. A lovely gentle Sunday in a lovely gentle city, and one I could happily repeat very soon.

The next morning I we got up and had an early lunch at the restaurant on campus – I had yummy seafood bibimbap with all sorts of sea things including delicious baby octopuses (octopii?) – before catching the bus back to Seoul station, buying a ticket and hopping on the KTX back to Daegu. All in all a super weekend with a lovely friend in a city I definitely plan to visit again.