Our Travel Journal

The culture village looks fake in photos — too colorful, too perfectly stacked on the hillside — until you're standing in it. Ended the day watching the tide come in near Jagalchi market with fish still being unloaded behind us.

Gyeongbokgung in the morning, an entirely different city by night in Hongdae — street performers, a three-hour dinner that turned into a five-hour dinner, and the kind of walk home where you take the long way on purpose.

Ate our way down the canal one more time before the flight tomorrow. Takoyaki, then okonomiyaki, then a third thing we couldn't identify but ordered anyway because the line was long and that usually means it's good. It was.

“Nobody else on the street.”

Snow started falling while we were walking back from Gion. We stopped under an awning near a closed tea house and just watched it collect on the tiled roofs for a while. Nobody else on the street. I don't think either of us said anything for a full five minutes.

Landed exhausted and jet-lagged but walked straight to the crossing anyway because we couldn't wait until morning. Standing in the middle of it while a wall of people flowed past on every side — nothing like the photos.