Seoul

Seoul's cherry blossom comes out in April, and so does the Mongolian desert. Hwangsa, the yellow dust blown in from it, can haze the sky for days at a time, which does nothing for the blossom. Late June to August is the monsoon, hot and humid, and hotel prices go up for it rather than down. Aim for autumn. From September into late October the skies are clear, the air is cool and the maples turn in the mountain parks. Winter, from November, offers snow on the palace roofs and cheaper rooms, and asks in return for days that stay close to freezing.

The city fills a flat river basin ringed by granite peaks, and the Han cuts it in two. North of the river is the old city: the Joseon palaces behind their stone walls, packed in among office towers and convenience stores that never close, and in the middle Namsan, a wooded hill with the N Seoul Tower on top. South of it, Gangnam and Yeouido went up almost entirely after the 1970s, in grids of glass towers with the malls underneath. Below all of it runs one of the densest subway networks anywhere, so almost nothing in Seoul is far, whatever the traffic says.

Stay north of the river on a first visit. In Myeongdong & the Palace district, Gyeongbokgung's walls are a few minutes from the K-beauty flagships, and on Namsan the hotels are built into the slopes, a cable car or a walk above Myeongdong. Gangnam and Yeouido are where Seoul goes to work, though Yeouido keeps a riverside park for when the finance crowd has gone home.

Be at Gyeongbokgung when it opens, ahead of the tour groups, on any day but Tuesday, when it shuts. Onjium has its dining room facing the palace's stone wall, and from Anguk Station the hanok alleys of Bukchon climb steeply between the two main palaces. Myeongdong sells K-beauty by day and street food by night, and the cable car up Namsan starts close by. South of the river, the Han at Yeouido is for a bike, and under Samseong, in COEX Mall, the shelves of the Starfield Library rise 13 metres in the middle of the shops. It is free, which is not the mall's usual line. In Yongsan, near Samgakji Station, the queue for a straw-fire grill house is worth joining early.

From Incheon the AREX express reaches Seoul Station in about 45 minutes. By road it takes longer, which in Seoul is the usual cost of staying above ground.