Changdeok Palace

We set out to find a strip of art galleries and stumbled upon a palace. To us it seemed out of place, across from a gas station, under the shade of urban office buildings. But as we would later learn, the city sprawled around the palaces, pushing new development out in all directions from the centre of the old.

The open air met palace walls, stretched out into grass and greens. With sky for ceiling the mountains poked up above the walls, towering over mulberry, juniper and Chinese scholar trees.

We pushed our chins into closed rooms covered in royal dress. The smell of wood from some childhood summer cottage filled the nose with its vintage spice. Above our heads the ceilings stood, all ornate details and brilliant colours.

We wanted through the site’s north walls into the Secret Garden. But not quite bad enough, we decided, to walk through the two-hour tour in Japanese. So we snapped one last photo and followed the footsteps out, sweaty with summer heat.

Out the exit we walked six hundred years in a single step. Suddenly modern cars soared by, their reflections chasing each other on the windows of boxy buildings. Just like that, we were back in downtown Seoul.