We spent both days this weekend in Insadong, which is definitely my favorite neighborhood in Seoul. It's the most traditional tourist area of Seoul and it features many buddhist temple cuisine restaurants and buddhist handicraft shops, so naturally it is home to Seoul's annual Lotus Lantern Festival. It is the largest cultural festival in Seoul each year, and it celebrates the birthday of Buddha. Only about a quarter of Koreans are buddhists, but the festival is a good representation of general Korean cultural, so many non-buddhists (like us!) attend the festival as well. On Saturday, we stopped in Namdaemun Market first to check out the famous "eyewear street," which supposedly offers great glasses with prescriptions for as low as $30 each. We didn't quite find glasses that cheap, but I picked out a cool pair of prescription sunglasses. We walked up towards Insadong through Myeongdong and past Cheonggyecheon stream. The stream has a long history in Seoul, but it was reconstructed in the past decade or so. It runs through most of central Seoul, and it is really beautiful in spring time. After our detour at the stream, we headed over to Insadong, which was a little more crowded than usual because of the festival. We did some more gift shopping there and then had dinner at a Korean vegetarian restaurant "Sosim". We walked around some more shops in the large, winding walkway that is Ssamzie Market. On the second level of the market, we caught a great view of the Lotus Lantern Festival's opening parade going down Insadong's main street. The parade featured giant hand-painted paper lanterns in the shape of animals, people, flowers, etc. Later in the evening we went to see the incredible ceiling of paper lanterns above Jogyesa Temple in Insadong. On the street outside the temple there was a stage with cultural performances as well.
On Sunday we headed out to Seoul in the afternoon for the second day of the festival. This time, the neighborhood was crowded with Koreans, foreigners (including lots of ex-pat English teachers like us!), and buddhist tourists from all over the world. The street in front of Jogyesa Temple was a sea of tents offering tastes of food from around the world and chances to take part in buddhist handicrafts. The tents kept us busy for a few hours and by the end of the festival we had a big bag of handmade gifts and other things to take home. We learned to make origami-style paper lotus lanterns, made our own natural soap, made a traditional buddhist ink drawing, and made a lotus candle. We also sampled various soy-based foods, lotus nut cookies, and a delicious Nepalese dish of curried vegetables and fried rice flour rings. We stopped for dinner at a vegan Korean restaurant in Insadong called "Oh Sae Gye Hyang." We had sweet and spicy chili mushroom rolls and really tasty dwinjang jiggae with radish leaves (a stew made with fermented soybean paste). After dinner we made our way over to Jogno street to see the parade, which is the festival's main attraction. The parade featured many of the same performers and paper lanterns as the night before, but it had even more new things to see. It lasted over two hours! At the end of the parade, we went to Cheonggyecheon to see the stream at night before heading home.
