Seoul in a weekend

Seoul rewards a weekend better than almost any big city I know, because the
good things sit close together and the metro does the rest. I had a long
weekend from Hong Kong and a July heatwave, and this is roughly the shape it
took.

Start in the old city, on foot. Sungnyemun gate, Deoksugung palace, the
Cheonggyecheon stream, and then Insadong for tea: the traditional teahouses
there were an instant favourite, old rooms with real style, and I ordered
Korean desserts I could not name and liked so much that I went straight into a
second one. Changdeokgung is the quieter, prettier palace, and the Secret
Garden behind it, which you can only see with a guide, was the highlight of
the day. I ended in the hanok villages, Namsangol and then Bukchon, where I
arrived at the end of the working day and fitted in like a fish in a barrel.
I liked the neighbourhood enough to swap my tiny hotel for a night in a hanok
there. I had been told the eastern side, the city wall and Dongdaemun, was
worth the detour; for me it was not.

Give a day to the DMZ, the closest you can get to North Korea, and spend the
afternoon back in the centre in a hanbok, the traditional dress that gets you
into the grand palaces for free. Then Myeongdong, which is a thousand signs
and a thousand snacks, a meat-and-heater dinner where the staff show you what
to do, and N Seoul Tower after dark, when the city is lights to every horizon.

If you are here in July, the Boryeong Mud Festival on the coast is a genuinely
great day out, and the Han River at sunset is where the locals are that
evening.

Two or three days like this and you leave feeling you saw Seoul rather than
changed trains in it. One warning: do not come in July expecting anything but
a sauna.