Gyeongbokgung Palace

On Saturday October 1, we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace again. This time we wanted to wear hanbok, traditional Korean clothes. There are many hanbok rental shops located right next to the palace and we went to Hanbok Girl. I HIGHLY recommend going here. There were many different hanbok you could choose from and were divided into traditional hanbok, special hanbok, premium hanbok, and men’s hanbok. They also let you chose a handbag and did your hair for FREE (for guys, they let you take a fake sword), along with giving us a locker to put our bags in. I chose a traditional one and rented it for 4 hours, which cost only 15,000 won (around $11). We didn’t have to leave a deposit so we just paid and left for the palace.

It was 10am by the time we left the hanbok shop and we got to see the changing of the guards ceremony at the entrance of the palace. We also got to go in for free since we were wearing hanbok. Afterwards we spent a couple hours walking around and taking lots of pictures; my favorite spot was the mini lake with a building in the center of it (shown below). Then we went to Bukchon Hanok Village (which is located right next to the palace). This is a Korean traditional village with many traditional houses (hanok). We walked up a hill and could even see N Seoul Tower in the distance! After 4 hours, we went back to the rental shop to return the hanbok and went to eat lunch.

Overall this was a very fun experience and I would recommend wearing hanbok to anyone visiting Korea! If you do, you should go to a rental shop earlier in the day. We got there around 9:30am (they opened at 9am) and were the only customers there. When we went back to return the hanboks, the store was very crowded. Going early meant we had first pick of what we wanted to wear and could get dressed and pay pretty quickly. I would also wait until October to wear hanbok. It was still pretty hot despite it technically being autumn already, but it was a good thing we waited as it definitely would have been worse to wear it in summer.