There's something about Samcheong-dong that makes me feel like I have stepped into a European country, but with one foot still in Korea. It has a quaint, charming feel to it, with modern, design-conscious stores and eateries, wedged in the narrow, rustic, alleys and hillsides- everything is modern, yet traditional at the same time. It's a neighborhood studded with boutiques, galleries, and restaurants, and most of all, overflowing with cutesy and picturesque cafes. Being the coffee-shop junkie that I am, I just went around taking pictures of interesting cafes:
I ended up at this 'Bookcafe' that was very cozy and quiet, and with books lining the entire back wall. I really like book cafes because they're so much quieter than other regular coffee shops, and being surrounded by studious people just makes you want to be studious too. It's a great place to be productive and feed off of the concentration of others.
One thing I noticed while on my self-entitled 'Samcheong-dong Cafe Tour,' was that most of the coffee shops here don't have WiFi. Even this 'Bookcafe' that I went to didn't have Internet, which is pretty unusual for a book cafe... but maybe this neighborhood is trying to hearken back to a better, simpler time when we weren't always 'plugged in', and when people actually talked to other people , read books, and wrote poetry, instead of reading celeb gossip sites, writing blog posts, and facebooking. I can respect that.
So here's a photograph of happiness. Soy coffee, a book, art on the wall, and pencils. :)