Adventures in Seoul, Korea: Day 6

Our last full day of Korea was Day 6.. :( But I tried not to concentrate on that fact and focus on the wonderful planned out day we had before us! We started our day around 8 AM and after breakfast in our room, we headed to Insadong to do some window shopping and visit Beautiful Tea Garden (Address: 193-1 Insa-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul) which my sister wanted to see for some reason.

Entering the Insadong area, we saw a long street with shops lined up on each side that continued almost endlessly and it just looked so nice and peaceful. There were lots of cultural shops including tea shops and shops filled with glass figurines and statues and of course, food shops~! They had these cute twisty crunchy and hollow tubes that they would fill with frozen yogurt and everyone was walking around with them so when we found the shop selling them, we had to get one to try! While it is basically just a normal vanilla frozen yogurt inside a cone (except that the cone is a long tube so you get more than usual), it's definitely a fun snack to eat and something to try out when in Insadong! There were also lots of other random food carts around the area that we passed by and tempted our tummies :(

One of the food stands we passed by. I'm not sure exactly what these were but they looked yummy!

After walking around for a bit (and picking up a modest amount of items ^__^), we came to Beautiful Tea Garden which turned out to be a quaint and peaceful tea cafe garden. Apparently my sister thought it was a tea museum, which I suppose it kind of was because they had an area with many different teas and flowers used to make the tea leaves, but they also had a dining area that had an open roof so the natural light spilled in, and it was just amazing! It was super pretty and relaxing and we enjoyed sitting down with a nice cup of freshly brewed tea. I forget the name of the tea (sigh) but it was super delicious and it was supposed to be good for your throat (which is why we ordered it because my mom's throat had been feeling a bit sickly) and it actually did help my mother's throat! Right after drinking the tea and the next day she said she felt much better! We took tons of pictures (I made mine my Facebook profile picture~! ;3) and felt super fancy sipping our tea ^__^

Yummy tea in cute fancy teapots plus complementary green tea rice cakes (the rice cakes didn't really taste like much but still a cute addition to our tea time ^__^)

After relaxing at Beautiful Tea Garden, we walked around Insadong casually taking in all the interesting sights and foods around. We walked around picking up small food goodies to bring back for our friends and family back home before it was lunch time. We also made sure to try out their little poop red bean snacks which were absolutely delicious despite their somewhat not so yummy appearance (see some pictures below!). I wish I could remember what the restaurant we ate at was called, but I forgot to take a picture or write it down /: It was located on the outer edge of the shopping streets with two other restaurants next to it. We had no idea if the food at the restaurant would be good or not, but there were so many people inside it, we decided it had to be at least decent... and it was that and more! We ordered  a hot plate dish that had freshly cooked beef bulgolgi and rice cakes which, as all restaurants in Korea do, came with side dishes and I must say, their potato fruit salad was deliciooouuus <3 The waiters were super nice and understanding of our lack of Korean speaking skills and if I could, I would totally recommend you guys all check the restaurant out. Unfortunately I can't, but I will say, stop by Insadong if you have time because it is a nice peaceful place in Seoul to visit (especially the Beautiful Tea Garden!).

Definitely a must try. They have these little shops all around Seoul so it's not like this is unique to Insadong, but you definitely need to pick some up if you come by a shop. The workers take a ball of honey or some sticky sweet mixture and mix it with some flour mixture and stretch it out so that it becomes a tiny ropes and they do this repeatedly until the one string of honey&flour becomes more than a 100 fine strings like web! Then they wrap some sort of filling - either peanut, chocolate, almonds, etc - and make a sort of chex-square shaped snack and package them. They're super yummy!

This lady mixed nuts or rice cracker puffs with some honey and other sweet spices together and bagged them right on the spot. We even got to sample a few before we got suckered in and bought a back of honey rice puffs. Absolutely yummy and even my mom liked it (who's not a big fan of sweet stuff so that's saying something!)

The poops~! They're only about $1 so I highly recommend picking one up if you can. I guess it is just a normal red bean pancake but it's yummy and warm and perfect for any occasion~!

Here's another food item I would highly recommend. It's not really about the taste for this, but more the presentation. If you can't tell, this is a little ice cream cart! They have them around Seoul too and they'll ask you if you want ice cream and if you say yes, you buy one and they'll give one to you ... after doing a few magic tricks with it and making it disappear! It's quite funny to watch and who can say no to ice cream right?

Our lunch meal~! Doesn't that look good? I loved how they had the rice cake rolls but they also had rice cake eggs (see those round rice balls?). Super yummy and more than enough for my sister, mom, and me!

After our lunch in Insadong, we moved onto the nearby traditional village of Bukchon Hanok Village which is a small community made of traditional Korean style houses and nearby Gyeonbokgung Palace and Samcheong-dong (if you're planning on visiting either of those two places). Because there are normal citizens who live in these houses, they ask you to be respectful and not too loud or rambunctious while walking around the village, but this wasn't too much of a problem because the whole area has just a nice quiet peaceful feel to it that you can't disturb without feeling guilty. The view from some areas of the village is also quite stunning as it looks down onto the rest of the neighboring area.

Once we finished walking around the village, we decided to move onto our next location - Apuejong~!!!! Now of course my sister and I had been looking quite forward to this day to go here and can you guess why? Well if you don't know already, SM Entertainment, JYP, and Cube have their main headquarters all located here! (Why YG doesn't also have a building in this area I have no idea why but it pains me because we didn't have time to go visit it Q.Q) We found directions online and I'll link it somewhere later (I actually can't find it for some reason but er.. if you google SM, JYP, CUBE directions you should be able to find something helpful! >__<;)  because they were actually really accurate and helpful in directing us to the buildings. The only one thing I'd say is that if you're walking down the street that JYP is supposed to be on, don't bother looking down every cross street because it's literally going to be right on the side of the street and you CAN'T miss it LOL. Plus, Cube is like right next to it so you really can't miss either of them. Unfortunately we didn't see any Kpop stars but it was nice just being able to ooggle (yes I made up that word) at their giant beautiful faces plastered on the walls *__* Now I'm not sure if it's done yet but I know when we went to visit SM's building, it was actually under construction but hopefully the next time I visit Korea, it'll look amazing and beautiful and I'll get to see Kyuhyun~! ^__^;

Once we found all 3 entertainment buildings, we decided to stop by the Grill 5 Taco owned by Super Junior's Donghae. He had actually very recently opened it up and yea okay, maybe we were hoping to see one of his friends stopping by to support his business (unfortunately that didn't happen =3= ) but the food was still yummilicious. We weren't too hungry since lunch had kept us quite full, but we ordered some Seoul Fries and they were very good! I was a bit disappointed that the building wasn't decorated with Super Junior signatures or posters and what not, but it still felt good to go and support him as a fellow ELF :)

How it looks on the outside - hopefully this will help you if you're having trouble finding it :P

Our celebratory photo of victory - we found it~!

Our yummy fries! It does look like quite a mess, and it kind of is.. but it's worth it!

After our "taco pit stop", we had a bit of extra time to kill (it was about 3:30 PM), so we decided to go to the Coex Aquarium. We arrived at the aquarium just a bit after 4 so the admission price was a bit discounted and because we had our passports, we also got an extra discount! (So make sure you bring your passport if you want a tourist discounttt ^__^) I'm glad we decided to make this spur of the moment trip because the aquarium was definitely amazing and tons of fun. It's totally different from any other aquarium I've ever visited and much cooler! They keep the fish in cute and unique tanks and there was even an alligator!! (See an awesome close picture of it below :3). The aquarium is also incredibly kid friendly and there's an area where you can touch the starfish and coral :)

So this ends day 6! I don't think I'll be writing a post for day 7 because it was our last day so we didn't do much and had to leave for the airport quite early /: I hope you enjoyed my Adventures in Seoul series and I hope my random ramblings will help you in some way if you ever visit Seoul or wish to! I'm so lucky to have been able to travel there last summer with my family and hope to return back someday! Until then, I will be revisiting my photos often as a way to keep the memories fresh in my mind! I hope you all have a lovely day and thank you so much for reading :) Feel free to leave a comment below and tell me what you thought was most interesting!

Adventures in Seoul, Korea: Day 4

For day 4, we had planned to start off by going to the War Memorial of Korea before heading off to Lotte World, but we came across some unexpected bumps early on. Day 4 of our trip was actually a Monday and due to some accidental slip-up, we didn't realize that the War Memorial is actually closed on Mondays! -o- Therefore, it was an unpleasant surprise as we walked up the stairs towards the entrance to realize that the doors were locked. It was quite disappointing as the War Memorial is supposed to be one of the top places to check out in Korea and admission is free! Luckily, there are quite a number of attractions outside of the museum itself such as actual planes that were used during the war that you can take pictures of/with so we had a good time looking around the outer perimeter of the museum.

Main entrance of the War Memorial of Korea

One of the many planes surrounding the War Memorial that you could take pictures with!

Because the War Memorial was closed, we finished looking around it before we ran out of our "allotted time" in our itinerary so we decided to stop by the Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market (aka Noryangjin Fish Market) and eat lunch there. The place was huge and not too far from the subway exit - though we did have to go into a GS-25 to ask someone for directions - and the fishy smell tells you you're going the right way. The bad thing about the fish market is that if you're a tourist or don't speak Korean fluently, you're bound to get ripped off. We went in knowing that, but we didn't realize how badly we would be jipped until it had already happened! Q.Q We walked around looking at all the seafood items they had displayed out in the water or on ice until one lady who spoke in Mandarin managed to convince my mom to buy her items. Most of the sellers have the same thing so it's hard to really decide where to buy anything, but it's best to walk around and see who's willing to give you the best deal. Most of the sellers also speak Mandarin quite fluently (like the lady we bought our food from) so it wasn't hard for my mom to communicate with them. We ended up getting sucked in and buying a enormous King Crab for 50,000 won (something me and my sister strongly advised my mom NOT to do but she wanted to try it out -_-;), three live octopus for about $3000 each (if I remember correctly), and 3 abalone. The lady was nice enough to give us some free clams too! After we purchased our live seafood, the lady directed us to a restaurant right outside the fish market where they cooked our food for us. She had told us it was only going to be like 5000 won per person (a "dining" fee) but our total bill turned out to be like 35,000 won!!! Total rip off and we were super confused why and when we asked them to explain, they couldn't really because (1) their Mandarin/English was definitely not up to par or (2) THEY DIDN'T HAVE A GOOD REASON >:( It wasn't like they even really did much when they cooked it.. they just grilled the abalone, chopped up the octopus (you eat it just raw o_o), and steamed the octopus.. sigh so yea we were definitely not happys. But what could we do? So we payed them and went on our way back to the fish market to go back to the subway station to our next stop. Luckily for us though, the lady who had sold us our seafood asked us what we thought and my mom, feeling ripped off, mentioned how it was way too expensive! Haha it was kind of funny because once my mom explained how much it cost, the lady got super upset too and actually ended up calling the restaurant owner and convincing him to give us 5000 won back LOL. Not that much but it was better than nothing. Walking back into the restaurant to get our money back was SUPER awkward though. The owner was soo mad and since the fish lady wasn't with us and he couldn't speak Mandarin, he was just glaring at us and blabbering away. Some of the workers there did speak some Mandarin and attempted to translate to us/him but we got our money and walked out of there. Ain't going back there anytime soon. So yes, lesson learned, go somewhere else and cook your own seafood unless you want to pay for a $100 mediocre meal.

The view from the second floor right when we walked in. Endless seafood shops~!

My sister and the giant King Crab we ended up buying for 50,000 won. You think it's worth it?

Fresh cooked clams!

The tiny octopuses we bought all chopped up .. yea not that pretty of a sight. They still moved too! Not because they were alive, it's something to do with the neurons firing still which makes it move but it's dead so yea. Still.. THE SUCTION CUPS STICK TO YOUR TONGUE BLECCCK. It's a weird feeling =3=

After our less than pleasant lunch experience, we headed off to Lotte World. By the time we arrived it was just past 4 PM so we were able to get the discounted price 21,00 won for people over 18 and 18,000 won for "children" (18 and under, if only America was like that). I didn't realize that Lotte World was an indoor amusement park but it was really quite amazing just stepping in and ..well basically a giant playground. I would HIGHLY recommend Lotte World to anyone visiting Korea. My mom is definitely not a rollercoaster person but Lotte World is filled with lots of younger kid/older adult friendly rides that are more gentle and has lots of shows and things to look at it. You think that might be boring but don't worry, there are definitely a good amount of those thriller roller coasters, water rides, and there's a sort of "Drop-Zone" ride if any of you know Great America. The lines for some rides weren't that long but the more adventurous/exciting rides like the roller coasters, we had to wait about an hour or so. There is even an outdoor portion of the park (so it's not entirely indoor) which is really quite nice but we didn't go out until late at night (we stayed until 9 or 10 PM I think) so we didn't get to see all the rides since some of them had already closed (including one of the roller coasters sigh)

THERE'S EVEN AN ICE SKATING RINK! But it's like a separate part of the park so I think you have to pay extra for it.

 

THIS WAS THE RIDE THEY WENT ON IN RUNNING MAN WHERE THEY HAD TO DO KARAOKE. It's really not that bad LOL but it was fun knowing that I was riding the same ride Yoo Jaesuk or Song Jihyo went on haha <3

The water ride! This line took quite a while but it was definitely fun. There's like two crazy drops!

View of the whole indoor park from the air balloons that circle the entire indoor park.

There's even an area that's like a mini Trick-Eye Museum (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go read my Day 3 post~!)

The outdoor portion of the amusement park! They have a castle that's lit up like Disneyland! Super pretty :)

After we got kicked out of Lotte World (they literally were like "Thank you for visiting us but it's time for you to go now!" hahaha) because it was closing time, we headed back home. I think it was the earliest we had gotten back to our residential home since all the previous days we had gotten home superr late. It definitely took a bit of time though since Lotte World is so far from Mapo, but it was well worth the trip. If you couldn't tell from the pictures, Lotte World is definitely a must go to stop on any tourist's itinerary and I would lovee to go back next time I visit Korea :)


Anyways, that's it for Day 4. Past the half way point :'( But keep out for Day 5 where we explore a palace and Namdaemun~! <3

Adventures in Seoul, Korea: Day 3

Day 3.. almost half way through our trip yet still so many more things to do~! The first thing on our itinerary was Trick Eye Museum located in Hongdae! It was a bit of a walk from the subway station but not too hard to find. It's located in a somewhat shop street area so I stopped by a Holika Holika while my mom and sister picked up some bread with baked cheese on top from one of those street food carts before we went into the museum. The museum has an a large section that you can view for free but there is also a huge other part of the museum that requires purchase of a ticket to go into. Tickets cost 15,000 won for adults and 12,000 won for kids (18 and under) but if you look on the web, you might be able to find some discount coupons. We spent quite a long time in the museum because there are so many places that you just HAVE to take a photo of (I have included just a few of the many we took). There is even an Ice Museum which is reaaally cold in order to keep all the structures frozen in the right shape (but they provide a blanket for you to wear while inside). The Trick Eye Museum is definitely a place to stop by when in Seoul!

The famous eye illusion (Amber from f(x) has a photo in here! :D )

You can slide down a slide!

After we finished going through the museum, we were quite hungry and moved onto our next location in Hongdae - the Hello Kitty Cafe~! (The address is: 358-112, Seogyo-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea) It was actually very close to the Trick Eye Museum so it wasn't hard for us to find, especially since it's a giant pink building. The inside is SO cute and everything is nicely decorated with pink cushions and Hello Kitty photos all over the walls. The menu items are also super cute and delicious - though a bit on the more pricey side but understandable since anything related to Hello Kitty is always quite expensive. The chocolate and banana waffle we had (shown in picture below) cost 6000 won (if I remember correctly) and there was this like Hello Kitty shaped mini cake that was 10000 won! However we also ordered a pink slushi (tasted like strawberries I think) and a sweet potato hot drink which was superrr good and actually tasted like sweet potato!

 

After our little Hello Kitty cafe break, we walked a bit more around the Hongdae area and visited the Free Market (also known as the Hope Market) in Hongdae Park which is only open in the afternoons after 1 PM on Saturdays and Sundays. The Free Market features artist who make jewelry, paintings, and other artsy craft items that you can purchase to support them. We looked around there for a little bit (it's not a very big area) and then continued on into the rest of the area until we got hungry enough to eat lunch. The whole area has many restaurants so there were plenty of eating locations for us to choose from but we settled on one that looked interesting from the windows (well open windows with the delicious smell of food floating out didn't hurt either) and we weren't disappointed. The restaurant was bustling with people but we were quickly seated. There were only like 5 options on the menu.. two A and B sets (one of the A and B sets included squid, the other didn't.. the difference between A and B was that A had less of something that I forget). We ended up choosing the 5th option which I'm not sure if it was a special but it was on a separate menu by itself and the waiter told us it was the not spicy option so we chose that (though it was meant to be split between 2 people not 3 but we knew it would be more than enough for us. The only problem with choosing it was that they only gave us 2 scoops of rice). The way all the dishes in the restaurant was set up was that each table had a mini burner (like at a Korean BBQ restaurant) and then they would bring out a giant square metal dish that held your raw meat, noodles, and vegetables in some sort of sauce/marinade, and then you would let it cook. It wasn't exactly Korean BBQ though since the style was a bit different (you'll see in the pictures) but it was DELICIOUS! Of course the dish was actually a bit spicy but not spicy enough to cause us a problem. The sauce was actually some sort of sweet soy sauce? I'm not totally sure but it was gooood. If only I could remember the name of the restaurant we went to.... -__- Either way if you find a place that has menu items that look like my pictures in Hongdae.. go check it out haha!

Before...

...After! (After we devoured most of it haha!)

Once we finished our satisfying lunch, we headed off, once again, to explore the area. My sister had looked up some special cafes she wanted to go to because Hongdae is famous for its many cafes. We passed by so many interesting ones but didn't have the room in our stomachs to go in. Some of the cafes we saw included a whale cafe, piano cafe, cat cafe (these and dog cafes are supposedly quite popular), and many more! We finally found the cafe my sister was looking for which was ... the Hongdae Mustoy Doll Crafting Café (located on 344-6 Seogyo-dong,Mapo-gu, Seoul) !! It's a cute cafe that has these blank white dolls that you can draw on and decorate. Many famous celebrities have gone there and made a doll and you can see the pictures of which celebrities have visited that cafe. We were a bit behind schedule though so we didn't actually make a doll but going to see the cafe was a fun trip! There are some REALLY nicely made dolls *amazed at the talent of some folk* There was also another cafe in the area called Coffee Prince cafe where a popular Korean drama was filmed at (forgot the name of the drama exactly since I've never watched it but apparently it's pretty popular because they have a sign that specifically says if you're here to take pictures, please only stay outside" haha).

Mustoy Doll Crafting cafe - from the outside you can see all the dolls on the shelves that people have made. If you look closely on the top shelf you can also see pictures of the celebrities who have visited this cafe.

Coffee Prince cafe from the outside

To my mother's relief, we finally left Hongdae and all it's tempting cafes to go to Ewha Women’s University. Of course my sister and I weren't too interested in the university itself but more the shopping areas around it buut for my mother's sake, we walked around the campus for a little while, until the sun set. The campus is actually quite nice (well on the outside, who knows about the classrooms, dorms, etc) but the shopping district around it is even nicer~! We picked up some shoes from the markets and shopped around until we got hungry enough to find a place for dinner. We picked a random restaurant on the streets of Ewha that I shall post a picture of as soon as I can (haha sorry don't have all my photos with me atm >__<). I would definitely recommend it though it wasn't exactly your typical traditional Korean food. It was a mix of Korean and Japanese style food in my opinion? But it was absolutely delicious and scrumptious :)

Udon (typical but delicious!), deep fried pork cutlet with rice and the yummy sweet sauce LOL, and a small bowl of salad that was SOO good. It had the Japanese miso dressing that's like sweet? Soooo good :)

Spicy seafood fried rice. It was delicious but definitely spicy haha!

Omelet over rice with a sausage patty? I don't remember exactly what the meat was but it was superrr yummy~!

After dinner, we finally had enough time and energy to go to Dongdameun - the place to go for nighttime shopping and street food~! The cool thing was that there weren't just street markets like you might expect at a night market area but there were actual department store buildings that were 12+ stories filled with little boutiques that sold shoes, hats, clothing, jeans, and everything for males and females! There were definitely some good deals at some of the shops and a few Kpop shops that sucked my sister and I in (though we resisted and didn't buy anything *super proud*). I must mention though, there was this one floor that was all denim material and the jeans were.. I'm not kidding.. Abercrombie Kids sizes!! Like they were seriously THAT skinny - I didn't even bother looking at them because I knew they wouldn't fit haha >__>'. The shop owners are all really nice and welcoming though. If you have time at night, you should definitely check out Dongdameun because there is an endless amount of shopping to do there. ^__^'

One of the many story-high buildings in Dongdaemeun

Alrighty.. that concludes day 3! I must say, writing our entire trip out is taking me a lot longer than I expected haha. I hope you guys are all finding this helpful and interesting and feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or just wanna say hello C; Hope you all have a wonderful day~!