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. :)