JINSUN BOOK CAFE, 150 JONGNO-GU TEL: 02 723 5977

Walking up the road away from the Korean Folk Museum and out of town, there is a fabulous selection of restaurants and cafes. Being one of the artier sections of town, this tree-lined road runs alongside one of the great walls of the Gyeong Bok Gung Palace grounds and is dotted with funky boutiques, book cafes, korean restaurants and art galleries.

Jinsun Book Cafe is the first of these that you will come to and as a large garden/terrace section out front. Inside the cafe is full of comfortable sofas and chairs, with books and magazines lining the walls and large windows looking back out into the garden.

The cafe offers some standard pasta and salad dishes for lunch or dinner and a range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. We stopped for coffees and ice creams after a rather bizarre lunch experience (involving raw crab and some other unidentified things). Our lattes were great, served in tall glasses with sugar syrup provided to add to tase. The kids had a scoop of ice cream each. Their ices were served complete with an Oreo cookie on the side, colourfully dotted with mini M&Ms and sugar sprinkles which made them very happy.

For two lattes and two scoops of ice cream, the bill came to around 20,000 won. More expensive than a trip to Starbucks, but in a much nicer environment.