Skip to content

Category Archives: Weekends in Korea

Holiday snaps from Korea

09-Mar-08
In the past few days I've loaded into Flickr some photos from my recent long weekend in Seoul and Busan. Nothing terribly sophisticated, and I rather overdid the pictures of pretty palace rooves, but it was a nice day. Photos are on my Flickr page here.
Also filed in Pictures | | Comments (0) »

The LKL long weekend in Seoul and Busan

27-Feb-08
A sketchy account of LKL's recent trip to the land of morning calm. Thursday night: arrive at Incheon, sail through immigration and customs, no wait for baggage or mobile phone rental, and buy a 14,000 Won ticket for the shuttle bus to a hotel in the City Hall area. Someone makes sure I'm queuing in the right place, and before I know it I'm at the Lotte Hotel. Get into a taxi. The driver doesn't know where my hotel is, and can't understand the map I have carefully printed off. We improvise our way to the Insadong Fraser Suites. Friday morning: as I have made absolutely no arrangements for the weekend other than organising a hotel and sending tentative emails to a ...
Also filed in Busan, Seoul, Travel | | Comments (0) »

Another FT guide to Seoul

02-Nov-07
Following the Weekend FT's smooth (and expensive) guide to a weekend in Seoul -- after which you would need a whole week to recover -- the FT's Korea Correspondent Anna Fifield has responded with a slightly more realistic schedule, published in their Korea supplement on 23 October. No ginseng facials, and no itineraries which assume that the whole population of Seoul has evacuated for the Chuseok holidays leaving the roads to just you and your taxi driver. Fifield's weekend is for those curious about encountering Korean culture, while the Weekend FT's is more designed for the business traveller with too much money to spend. So here goes: Saturday morning: Do a palace -- the Deoksu-gung, Gyeongbok-gung or preferably the Changdeok-gung with the ...
Also filed in Seoul, Travel | Tagged | Comments (0) »

Stop piercing my Seoul!

28-Oct-07

Stop piercing my Seoul!

An alternative travel experience summary by Aashish Gadhvi My first trip to Korea was something I had been looking forward to and preparing for with great enthusiasm. Since my initial interest in Korean cinema/sports, I had become a fully-fledged Korean fanatic and digested all sorts of Korean goodies at every opportunity. So going to Korea for me was as good as a religious pilgrimage. But during my preparations, I read many websites, books and personal accounts which really contradicted the premature views which I already held about Seoul. I would say that the things that I heard were 80% negative, with many people complaining and moaning about various issues related to surviving in Seoul. To hold my hands up, I did ...
Also filed in Seoul, Travel | Tagged , | Comments (0) »

The FT’s smooth weekend in Seoul

08-Oct-07
I don't usually spend much time reading the Weekend FT's How to Spend it magazine - most of the things in the magazine being out of my financial reach. But this weekend, in their ongoing series of "Smooth Guides" to a long luxurious weekend they finally featured Seoul. So here's the FT's tips for how to spend a weekend there. Firstly, they stayed at the W Seoul (Walkerhill). Their second choices were the Park Hyatt near the Coex Mall ((Never been there so I can't comment)) or the Grand Hyatt ((Which is a perfectly acceptable business hotel, but quite a let down after the Hyatts in Tokyo, and also situated in the middle of precisely nowhere. I had two days there while ...
Also filed in Seoul, Travel | | Comments (3) »

Farewell to Seoul

25-Jan-07
Some of the highlights and not-so-highlights of my visit to Seoul. First the good. Soundday in Hongdae Seoul's National Museum of Contemporary Arts The Leeum Gallery (post to come soon once I've done a bit of research. Now done. Post is here) Insadong. Yes, there's some touristy tat for sale, but there's also some really high quality stuff as well. Fabric designer Lee Geon Maan has two outlets, selling ties, scarves, handbags and purses to die for, numerous shops contain the patchwork silk chogakpo (above right), while you can also spend millions of Won on ceramics. Park Young Sook has a gallery to herself and also takes up most if not all of a gallery on the other side of the road. Both galleries ...
Also filed in Park Young-sook, Seoul, Travel | | Comments (3) »