I went to Portland with a couple of friends two weekends ago. We drove there midday on Saturday and stay overnight. We went shopping at Woodburn Outlets, tried a couple new restaurants we've never been before and got to enjoy a gorgeous fall afternoon in the park. Here are some snapshots from my iphone.
Day 6. Last day in Seoul. Our flight is in the afternoon & night. So we decided to go back to Myeongdong for some last minute shopping and lunch since it’s pretty close to our hotel. We stopped by Shinsegae to buy some cosmetics for our family & friends and then had samgyetang for lunch. We started our trip with Samgyetang lunch and ended it with one. I guess we just can’t have enough of those delicious chicken soup :) After lunch, headed back to the hotel, packed our remaining stuff, asked to hotel to call us a taxi to go to the airport and we left Seoul.
I have to say considering we only stayed here for 6 days (more like 5 full days really), I’m glad that I got to see so many places. The weather was great, the food was great, but to be honest, I feel that my traveling buddies made the trip super duper awesomely fun. We created so many good memories during this trip and I’m thankful for that.
A week is probably not enough time to explore Seoul (let alone outside Seoul) since it has so many interesting things to see and explore. Nevertheless, it felt like with this trip, at least I got a little bit of preview of this city. I definitely want to come back again next time, and hopefully I could stay longer then.
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.
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.
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.
