Chill at Ihwa-dong Mural Village, Hakrim Dabang, Dongdaemun

Love to find somewhere in Seoul with pretty wall murals to take photographs with? Then, you definitely have to visit Ihwa-dong Mural Village! Not only are there many pretty wall murals, you get to visit for free too!

Ihwa-dong Mural Village has apparently featured in a few Korean drama shows. It is no wonder though if it features that many beautiful backgrounds. The village is located in Naksan Park.

To get there, you could take the subway and alight at Hyehwa station (Line 4) before leaving from Exit 2. Simply turn left onto Dongsung-gil street and walk straight for 200m till you see the Lock Museum. Walk a little more and turn right onto Naksan Gongson-gil street. Lastly, you will see Naksan Park after you climb up the 'hill' or rather steep slope. But worry not, there are many signs along the way which will guide you to Naksan Park.

When we entered the park, we spotted art installations almost immediately. There are a few such as the man and a dog, and a family with a pet dog.

Walking further into the park, you will reach the artistic mural village fairly quick. Here are 2 of the many murals I took photos with:

One of the famous murals has to be the one with angel wings. So if you would love to pose as an angel with pretty white wings, you could get a picture there as well. Just expect that there will be a tiny queue!

After the morning visit to the mural village, we headed back to the subway station before leaving from Exit 3 for Hakrim Coffee Cafe. Sounds familiar? If you have watched 'You from Another Star', you might have seen the main actor (alien) acting in this cafe for the drama.

Hakrim Coffee is located on the second floor of the building. Just head up the flight of the stairs and you will arrive at the rustic and vintage cafe. I took some photographs of the insides of Hakrim Coffee. If you look closely at the second photo below, you will see the table at the far right with a tiny sign on the table. That is the table which Kim Soo-hyun sat at while filming 'You from Another Star'. Apparently, the sign says that the table is reserved. I guess someone did reserved it to perhaps experience how it felt to sit there?

Hakrim Coffee serves quite a wide variety of coffee. If you are a coffee lover, remember to find some time to visit this cafe! On the other hand, non-caffeine lover like me decided to go for a slice of light cheese cake with blueberry sauce for 5,000Won.

The cheesecake has a tiny rabbit on it. Overall, the presentation is cute and the cake goes well together with the blueberry sauce. Meanwhile, my friend ordered a cup of coffee while we spent some time there resting from all that walking we did in the morning. Once in a while, it is nice to sit down and just observed the people and traffic outside the cafe.

The next place we went was Dongdaemun (Line 4). I have been there once when I visited Korea with my family to do some shopping. However, I believed that after shopping at the Gangnam Express Bus Terminal, nowhere else is near comparable in terms of the pricing and designs of the goods.

Although we did not buy anything at the multi-level shopping malls, we explored the streets for some awesome street food! I have been wanting to try the french fries coated hotdog for a long, long while and I finally got to eat it!

It is crunchy on the outside, but I felt that there is too much flour in between the fries and hotdog? In any case, I like it pretty much! :)