Seoul Day 5: Shopping at Hongdae

After the Trickeye Museum, we stopped by the Hello Kitty Cafe since it’s nearby. I have to say that the place has a little too much pink for me. But it was still fun visiting the place. When we got there, it was still pretty early so the place wasn’t crowded. We took our seats on the second floor where we noticed there’re two guys sitting at two tables away from us (I didn’t know that guys like this kinda place). We ordered a couple of different thing that were hello-kitty decorated. The food was just okay, nothing too special.

Afterwards, we pretty much just walked around the area and did some shopping. 

We encountered the information guys—guys who wear read attire carrying maps and helped tourists to find their way. They’re pretty helpful actually on pointing where we should go in English. We got a map of the area from them, and interestingly, you would think that the map will be in English, right? Nope. It’s in Chinese. We couldn’t read it, but at least they have the buildings and landmarks in there. So it was useful.

Stopped for another coffee break, or I should say mainly we just wanna get away from the sun for a little while. We were gonna try this one patbingsu place that I heard is pretty good, but the line was so long. So we opted for the Twosome Place again instead.

We stopped by Ehwa’s Univeristy Campus in the afternoon. Their building is very cool. I’m impressed by the architecture.

Afterwards, we grabbed dinner in a restaurant in the area that I have no idea what the name of the restaurant was.

After dinner we shopped a little bit more and decided to call it a night. When we were trying to make our way back to the subway, the area was filled-packed with people. I heard that Hongdae is pretty lively at night, but I didn’t think it would be that packed. There was literally no space between me and the person around me—that’s in front, behind, and besides me. We were walking practically side by side with people around us. I would’ve taken a picture of this but, as I said, there’s barely any room to move, let alone for me to open my camera bag. One interesting thing though, even though it was super packed, nobody was pushing. People were just lining up in a very orderly fashion, which impressed me. Later, I found out that apparently there was some kind of a festival going on at the time, celebrating Buddha’s birthday. No wonder it’s super packed.

Anywho, we made it back to our hotel. Packed (or maybe I should say forced) our stuff (some of us did some damage with the shopping) into our luggages and decided to took a night stroll to the Seoul gate again since Bella & Melissa didn’t get to go with us on the first night. We stopped by the convenient store on our back to pick up some snacks and drinks. And that’s day 5. Can’t believe that our trip is coming to an end already.

Seoul Day 4: Namsan Tower & Myeong Dong

After we got back in Seoul, we were dropped off at the cable car station for the Namsan Tower. We bid our farewell to Mr. Choi and the driver who have been very nice these past 2 days to us. We got there about an hour or so before sunset, so it was still bright. There was a line for the cable car, but it wasn’t too bad. We purchased our two-way ticket and rode on the cable car.

We found this magazine for tourists with handy maps and recommendations. But of course, those places we went the past couple days. Talk about timing.

And then again, there’s the stairs. I swear there are sooo many stairs in Korea.

The view from up here:

We stayed for a while there. After sunset, our stomach began to growled so we took the cable car back to where we were and walked to Myeong-dong for dinner.

I like Myeong-dong. The area’s filled with shops with bright lights and people bustling here and there. Even though it was a weekday, it’s pretty packed. It definitely felt livelier, more energetic and active here (or Seoul in general as a matter of fact) compared to Seattle.

We picked Wangbijib (왕비집), a Korean BBQ restaurant for our dinner. This place is apparently a pretty well known tourists place. The servers speak Chinese and Japanese (I think), so if you can’t speak Korean, you can speak one of the two languages. They grilled the meat for us too on the table. We were so hungry we ended up ordering more portions. At the end of the night, we were stuffed and happy.

Seoul Day 4: Nami Island

Day 4. Yesterday’s trip to Boseong took a lot of energy out of us. We passed out as soon as our head hit the pillows. So for today’s itinerary, first up is Nami Island. Originally, we were going to leave for Nami island at 8 am, but since we were so tired from the day before, we pushed back the pick-up time to an hour later. So after grabbing some breakfast from the nearby convenient store, we headed to Nami Island around 9. The trip took about 2 hours or so and it was a pretty smooth drive. When we arrived, Mr. Choi helped us bought the ferry tickets and gave us general information about the island. After that we lined up for the ferry rides. Side note: there are to way to get to the island—with ferry boats or with zipline. We chose the ferry boats because I’m afraid of heights :p

When you arrived at the island, this is pretty much what you’re greeted with:

We arrived around lunch time, but since it’s still a bit early, we decided to walk around a little bit. Surprisingly, there are many local tourists too in the island (or at least I think they are since they all speak Korean). The weather was really nice too, so it was really refreshing walking around and enjoying the scenery.

If you’re a Korean drama fan, you might watched or at least heard about the famous drama, Winter Sonata. Nami Island is where they shoot the drama at and this place has became a tourist attraction ever since that drama gotten very popular in Asia. I watched the drama a loooong time ago, so I couldn’t really recall the storyline very well now. This location (below) is supposedly where the lead characters have their first kiss.

After a little bit of walking around, we got hungry and decided to go for the chicken bbq (닭갈비) restaurant that was recommended by Mr. Choi (supposedly chicken bbq & buckwheat noodle are the signature dishes at Nami Island, so we gave it a try). We clearly couldn’t grill our meat properly because once we started, we somehow created a big cloud of smoke. One of the server came over and taught us how to grill our meat properly so we’re not filling the place with smokes. The meal was pretty tasty and all the dishes that we ordered were delicious.

After lunch, we decided to rent tandem bikes for an hour because there were so many people riding bikes around us and it looked like fun. Since there’re 5 of us, we rented 2 tandems and 1 segway. I have to say, tandem bikes are sooo hard to ride. Either that or I just don’t have a good co-ordination skills with my partner. It was so hard to start, but once you get going it’s not so bad. Although you’ll still have to balanced the bike so both you and your partner won’t fall. Anyway, I ended up not doing much because my partner have a super power strength :p It was pretty fun though. I haven’t rode a bike in a long long time and with the pretty sceneries and good weather, it was definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

We encountered emus roaming around freely:

After we returned our bikes, we made our way back to the ferry dock. My sister and I sat down for the caricature drawings (which turned out pretty good) on the way for souvenirs. And that’s the end of our Nami Island visit. Definitely want to go back again next time.

Vlog: Seattle Street Food Festival

This last Saturday, I went to Seattle Street Food Festival at Cal Anderson Park with a couple of friends. One of my friend was volunteering and asked me to swing by and checked out the event. So I did. We arrived pretty early and ended up walking around the area and came back again at 5 when the event started (they only started selling food right at 5 pm). Since we were pretty hungry, we decided to go to Tacos Chukis nearby to get some snack.

We headed back a couple of minutes before 5 and the area wasn’t really packed, but an hour later, people started to come and it was crowded. It was hard to navigate through the sea of people. Good thing we came early and had a chance to checked out the line up. Anyway, the food was pretty good. Tried a couple of different things and shared them with the group. Plus the weather was awesome (although we had a little bit of grey clouds for a while, still, a good summery weather). They’re going to held a Night Market on Sept 7, so I might go again. Here are some pics from that afternoon.

Seoul Day 3: Boseong Green Tea Plantation

Day 3. Our plan for the day was to spend our whole day at Boseong Green Tea Plantation. The place is quite far and it takes about 5 hours from Seoul to Boseong. We hired a driver and a van to took us there since we thought going with public transportation would probably took us longer. All4U Korea Tour is the service that we used for the transportation arrangement. The communication for planning and reservation was really easy and the driver and interpreter who met us were really nice and friendly. They even took time to tell us information about the place that we were visiting. I highly recommend this company if you ever thinking of using private transportation service (they offer services in Seoul and outside Seoul).

We started our day very early. 6.30 am, Mr.Choi (the interpreter) met us at our hotel lobby ready to go. We immediately got on to the van and so began our (short) road trip. An hour into the trip or so, we stopped by at a rest area for bathroom breaks. And since we haven’t had any breakfast, we bought some snacks for our breakfast.

After getting some snacks, we continued our journey. The scenery was pretty nice. There were lots of trees and mountains that we passed by. Definitely a different vibe from Seoul’s urban environment.

After almost 5 hours drive, we finally arrived at the plantation. Coincidentally, that day was the first day of the green tea festival. So there were tents set up near the parking lot area. We took a quick look at the festival tents and saw some food stalls and people selling stuff in different stalls. We were going to get lunch since we arrived there almost at noon, but since Mr. Choi recommended us to get lunch inside the plantation—where they sold various green-tea infused food apparently—, we immediately headed for the entrance of the plantation to get in.

We bought our entrance tickets and headed straight to the restaurant.

So the menu on the restaurant is pretty limited, but still give you a decent options to choose from. We ordered a couple of different dishes to try on, and yes, everything on the menu have green tea as their ingredients. So we ordered Naengmyeon (냉면), Jajangmyeon (짜장면) and Bibimbap (비빔밥)—which came with green-tea infused noodle and rice. Everything was tasty. We even ordered seconds.

After we finished our meal, we wanted to start exploring. The view of the plantation was amazing! Although, I have to say, from the beginning, the thought of having to hike to the top of the hill is a little daunting to me.

And surely, after we finished our hike around the plantation, I was completely exhausted. Some of the track was steep and me being not in shape was definitely not helping. Nevertheless, it was a great experience. We ended up going on a slower pace and made jokes along the way to make the hike bearable under the scorching sun. The one thing that I ended up avoiding doing was to look up. It’s just better to not know how far I need to climb :P After we got to the top though, the view was gorgeous. It was worth a hike :)

Halfway to the top, we saw an ahjumma resting with us on one of the rest stop. All of us were really surprise when we looked at what she wore on this hiking trail. High. Heels. Seriously. We couldn’t even begin to understand why would you wear high heels on a hiking trip. I ended up asking the ahjumma if her feet hurts, but she replied, “괜찮아.. 괜찮아” (It’s alright, it’s alright) as if this is something normal that she does everyday. Props to the fashion-concious ahjumma. I would never be able to pull off wearing heels on a hike.

After we finished our hike a couple of hours later, we finally back to the entrance of the plantation. We were sweating and exhausted and in need of something refreshing. So we headed to the dessert stalls and bought green tea ice cream and green tea latte. Afterwards, we took a quick peak at the souvenir shop, bought a couple of boxes of green tea and headed back to Seoul.

On our way back, we stopped by Jeonju for dinner. Jeonju is famous for their Bibimbap, so we thought we give it a try. We visited Go Gung (Mr. Choi picked the restaurant for us) which apparently are famous for their Bibimbap. We each ordered one and after we finished stuffing our stomach with good food, we continued our journey. We arrived at our hotel around 11pm. It truly was a long day.