Nonhyeon

Well...we finally found a furniture street- Nonhyeon Furniture Street near the Express Bus Terminal south of the Han River. A very short subway ride, and unlike Sadang, the moment we emerged from the subway station we were there. Right smack dab in the middle of a very nice, upscale furniture district. Now, I say upscale because the stores were all glass-front buildings with beautiful layouts, most of them several floors high, and all of them manned by sales people in tailored suits eager to show you around. The first store we stopped into was S&K Gallery. We were the only customers in the store, and we were met by a very polite salesman, who pointed out (in part English, part hand signals) that there was an elevator and his store was five floors high. He proceeded to take us straight up to the 5th floor, and let us look around, then to the 4th, etc. It's rather nice when they can't speak English sometimes, because you don't have to put up with high pressure sales pitches like at home! Well, we found a piece we liked- a beautiful, tall chest of drawers with a rounded front in a dark stain. Hopefully by the time we want to buy furniture its still there! One of the fun things about shopping here is that you know what you buy will be unique when you get back to the States. Oh, and remember I said these places were high-end? Well, if you compared the prices to American furniture prices, they were actually very reasonable. And you get all the luxuries of the high end furniture stores-custom colors, fabrics, etc. Of course, a lot of the stores had an American Traditional floor, so we had to suffer through the displays of Sealy Posturepedic mattresses and Lane sofas as well. There were about 5 city blocks of furniture stores on both sides of the street, so there was plenty to see. Now, this is not Korean traditional furniture-they like a lot of modern styles and had several German stores, as well as the "Korean Ikea". That was fun-we only browsed through the first floor, but unlike Ikea they had silk comforters (soooo nice!). I think the one I liked was about 681,000 won, which is about $600. Very pricey, but I can't be sure that's what the price was, because I couldn't read the signs! Oh well...when it comes time to actually buy stuff, I'll probably make Rachel's friend Jane come with us, so she can translate. So anyway, we basically window shopped there for 3 hours. Lots of fun!