The beautiful city Seoul

Last week I visited Seoul in South Korea for a few days together with my friend Rain Slingerland. I was suppose to post some pictures from the trip right away when I came home, but I had some work to do first. As I told you briefly before I have been asked to write an article for an art magazine's e-news letter, and I started on a new painting to document and write a step-by-step article. I got the painting and text finished on Saturday, so yesterday I send it in. The article will be published online on June 5th, and I will give you all the details then. I am so excited about it, next step is to try and get an article published in an art magazine… Below is the painting I made for the article.

You are beautiful. Oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 30x30cm. Light-vented bulbul. Reference picture my own.

So, then on to Seoul! Seoul is a beautiful and interesting city, a nice combination of old and new. The feel of the city and the people was much more western and less asian than China. It is a big city, but it felt small and cozy. The Korean people must love coffee, because there was a cafe in every single corner! There were also a lot of pubs, and I actually found one that sold cold cider. So good! ;-)

The first evening we only had time for a quick stroll in the night market and ended the evening in a small local barbecue restaurant. The food was amazing, and our waiter really tried his best to make us feel welcomed.

The two following days we just ran about the city like crazy, trying to see as much as possible. We went to the music market to find Rain's husband a 12 stringed guitar and succeeded, we visited the pearl and fabric market, we tried out a huge art museum, we found a beautifully stocked art shop where I bought some art supplies, we walked around just looking, we took the bus around the city, we tried the subway and we took the cab when we got lost ;-) And we ate delicious food! We have a few very good Korean restaurants here in Rizhao we visit regularly, but it always better when you are in the country itself. Not just the food, but then you get the whole experience as well… I really love to travel, and trying out the different foods are one of the best things about traveling!!

Seoul station. We lived in a hostel just a 5 minutes walk from the station, and from it we had a direct 45-minute train to and from the airport. Nice and easy!

Dongdaemun market. 10 min walk from Seoul station. 

Traditional and modern icons side by side.

Colour feast for the eyes.

Shoes. A lot of them.

Our waiter our first night in Seoul in a traditional bbq restaurant. The food was amazing.

A bicycle repair shop. That is what I call a shop in whole in the wall...

Old and new.

Street art and a huge happy smiley face on the wall. That is pretty much how we felt the whole trip!

Dongdaemun market during the day.

Kids play store.

Pearl market.

The 'restaurant street', where you could find everything from Mexican, English, Thai and whats not food to eat. I rather liked this restaurant's roof terrace.

Korean bbq. Doesn't it look beautiful?

Rain demonstrating a very narrow house on one street.

Nice copper pots.

You could find these kind of parkings everywhere in the city. Elevator parking. Genius!

Art museum. It was a huge complex with concert houses, museums, restaurants and more. We only saw the traditional exhibition, because the rest of art shown there at the moment was this ultra modern art that neither Rain or me was interested in.

And our meal the last evening. Korean bbq again! Before and after…

As you can see I have had a small makeover of my blog. I played around with photoshop a little yesterday to make a new banner, and I must say that I am quite happy with the result. Now I have to decide if I shall do a similar make over for my website.