One more museum and more wandering...

This being my last weekend in the city, i was hoping to see as many places I could and also buy a couple of souveneirs to take back home. Quickly checked the 'Rainbow' magazine for places to see and decided on the National museum of contemporary art located in Seoul grand park. I have never been to that part of the city before and was ready to do little bit of exploring. After a quick look at both the city map and the subway map, I walked down to Yeoksam subway station and was on my way to Seoul grand park.

Seoul grand park is a big open space dotted with theme parks, a zoo and the national museum of contemporary art. I was surprised to see that quite a few people were braving the bitter cold to go to theme parks which are primarily outdoor venues. Walking on the road from the station, I noticed a lot of street vendors selling 'boiling silkworm larvae' and would have to say that it isn't the most appetizing scene I've seen. More than the looks, it is the smell of the food that made me stop breathing for a while and walk a little faster than usual. It appears to be a favourite among little kids as I saw quite a few of them mucnhing them happily.





After a quick 15 min uphill walk to the museum, I was inside the huge building ready to check out some more art. Although I don't really understand most of it, I always thought I could appreciate good art and I definitely had a lot of oppurtunity to do that in Seoul. The building had three floors and had around 10 galleries. I went through all the galleries and have to say that some of the paintings were absolutely breathtaking and nothing like I've ever seen before. One of the attractions in the museum was the video art by a Korean artist displayed in 1024 TV sets arranged in the shape of big cone. There were a couple of special exhibitions going on in the museum at that time ( 'Currents in Contemparay Chinese art 2005' and 'Young artists from Korea, China and Japan' ), I checked out them as well and was overall pretty impressed by the paintings. I spent nearly 3-4 hrs in the museum and by now was getting pretty really hungry (inspite of the heavy breakfast i had in the morning). I quickly walked to the subway station and was on my way to Myeong-dong station hoping that i would get something to eat there and also to see the Myeong-dong cathedral.



I have to say that Myeong-dong took me by surprise as soon as I got down from the train. First of all, I haven't seen so many people at one place and more specifically in one street in all of Seoul. There were loud speakers right next to the station blaring out english pop music and I could see all kinds of fashion apparel retailers displaying their stuff at the stores. The crowd was overwhelmingly young and looked as if they cannot hold on to their money in their wallets anymore. I noticed that both Burger King and McDonalds outlets were present in the street but didn't dare to venture into them as they were completely packed and was sure that i would not have a place to sit. I walked through the street and finally found a Pizza hut near the end of the street. Finished my lunch and was back on the streets in no time. I walked around for some more time and did some window shopping but was not really in a mood to buy clothes at that time. To my delight, I found a PC bang (which literally means PC room or Cybercafe in korean) in the street and thought I would go in and do some surfing. After an hour of internet surfing, I decided that it is time to go home. Got back to my hotel room in an hour and took some time to indulge in the pleasure of lying in my bath tub after a long day of walking in the bitter cold.