덕수궁 (deoksugung)

a few weeks ago i took a little trip to seoul. went to a couple of art museums and walked around an old palace.

no, these photos are not distorted or stretched, that's what the sculptures look like.

these sculptures were on the outside of the palace walls, on the way to the seoul museum of art.  the museum had a renoir exhibit that i didn't look at and a small room with some paintings by korean artist chon kyung-ja.

i quickly moved on to 덕수궁 (deoksugung) the palace. this place has over a 500 year history.

 

 

 

on the palace grounds was the national museum of art, deoksugung. it had a fernando botero exhibit that was pretty nice.

as you can see it was dark when i re-emerged. i was able to get see a little and get some photos, but finding light was tough. most of the buildings here are not painted, so it's too bad i couldn't really see it. but let me tell you, the smell of all of that old wood was powerful.

 

 

 

this building was designed by a russian architect named a.i. sabatin in 1900. the bat in the detail is rad.

 

 

 

 

 

there was some kind of concert going on outside of the palace as a left.

on the return ride home on the train, a couple ajumas (aunties) beat me up. not really, but it was a strange occurrence. they were talking to me, in korean, and one of them hit me in the back really hard after one of my responses. i don't fully understand why. i think they were either drunk or just being crazy ajumas.