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 2

So here we are - Day 2 of our week long trip in Seoul! We actually got back pretty late the night before and were supposed to get going around 9 that morning, but we ended up WAKING up at 9 and leaving around 10! We ate breakfast at in our room which consisted of fried eggs (bought from the supermarket!), bread, and cereal (mhm mhm, American style breakfast haha<3) and then headed off.

We had planned this day to be our shopping day in Myeongdong which is filled with countless numbers of shops selling beauty (the bulk of what we bought) and clothing items. Our first stop was the Lotte Mall where we visited Star Avenue and the EXO pop up shop in Lotte Mall Young Plaza. Of course I freaked out in Star Avenue when I saw all the giant Super Junior photos (but I'll spare you all and only share one photo I took ;P) and hand prints! And for any of you avid Running Man fans, there was even a hand print by Kwangsoo! Lotte Mall itself was filled with quite a few nice Asian brands including Stylenada and an official SM permanent store on the bottom floor. My mom got so bored waiting for me and my sister to look at everything in the entire SM store so she left and went to walk around the rest of the building which was good because I ended up buying a door-length poster of Kyuhyun which cost 54,000 won (yes incredibly pricey but I don't regret it one bit ^__^). We saw some girl pick up THREE of the door-length posters (all costing 54,000 won) and buy them all and my sister and I were just like O__o dang..that girl is either loaded or a dedicated fan haha.

Kyuhyun will always have my heart <3

Big Bang!

Kyuhyun's handprint! Ahh was so happy to just touch it despite all the germs it was probably covered in haha <3

Pop-up shop!

Random cute puff wall (you can move the colored cotton balls to make images)

After we finished exploring Lotte Mall and taking a ton of pictures in the garden area outside and at Star Avenue, we ventured out to find the Dr. Fish cafe (also known as T & Coffee which is the sign that you see on the outside of the building) which yes, took us ages to get to because of super unclear online directions and a failing Google maps >:( But nonetheless, we managed to find our way there and settled in for some delicious drinks and a relaxing 20 minute foot soak with little fishies eating our dead skin! Sounds like a weird combo right? Don't worry, they don't give you your drinks until you're done with the fish spa (or you can choose to have your drinks first and then have the foot spa) cause I guess they don't want anything spilling into the water tubs? Anyways, the way the Dr. Fish cafe works is a bit confusing if you don't know how to read Korean and the workers there only know minimal English so it was a bit hard for us to figure out how the whole shibang worked. What you have to do is buy a drink or food - anything on the menu - and then you can purchase the 20 minute Dr. Fish treatment for an additional 3000 won. Each person must buy one item and one treatment, and you CAN'T buy just the Dr. Fish treatment without a food/drink item. Why they do this? To get more money I suppose haha. But it is a cafe and they do want customers to try out their menu items - which were actually quite delicious! I got a yogurt smoothie, my sister got a blue lemonade, and my mom (of course) ordered an Americano coffee. We also got our choice of a free honey toast (one of those giant square sweet breads that are toasted and usually come with ice cream and fruits and other toppings) or a green tea rice mochi (we chose this because it sounded more unique). The drinks were all super yummy and the rice mochi wasn't too sweet (perfect for my mother who hatees sweets) and had a nice gummy texture that I enjoyed.

The store that one episode of "We Got Married" was filmed at. We passed by this on our quest to find the Dr. Fish cafe!

Look at all those fish getting some grub haha~!

After our relaxing spa break, we hit the streets for some hard core shopping in the Myeongdong area. If you want to buy any makeup or beauty products, Myeongdong is one of the best places because ALL the makeup brands have at LEAST one shop located there and they all give out free samples for just walking in and taking a look around! Pretty awesome right? *looks at all my fellow freebie loving asians* ;D Most shops give out cotton pads, face masks, makeup remover wipes, or small skincare samples at the door but there are always better "gift with purchases" that they give out if you buy a product. Lots of Korea celebrities (especially kpop artist *__*) support/sponsor makeup brands and sometimes the shops will have posters of that celebrity that they will give you if you buy over a certain amount! Definitely an incentive to buy more makeup for me haha <3 If you find an occasionally nice salesperson (or maybe clueless), you can ask if you can have the poster and they might actually give it to you for free - that's what happened with me and my sister when we went into this giant supermarket near Seoul square that had small open beauty shops in the middle. Yoona has always sponsored Innisfree so when we saw a poster of her, we were like OOOH WE WANNT so my sister went up to the saleslady and asked her if they had the Yoona poster and the lady was like "Oh you like Yoona? *smiles* hmm.. *looks around* yes I think so, just hold on" and then she called up another saleslady and somehow they found a HUGE stack of the Yoona posters and she just handed us TWO! Was NOT expecting her to give it to us for free but the fact that she gave us two was super nice and awesome :)

The newest collection from Innisfree - with, of course, Yoona's delightful modelling :)

SPAO! This clothing store is sponsored by SM artists and of course, seeing Kyuhyun's pictures in beautiful clothing.... oh my I went crazy aha. But don't worry the clothes actually aren't too pricey - probably about the same pricing range and style as our American GAP.

There's even a Everysing store on the top level of SPAO which sells lots of SM products like posters, pillow cases, mugs, etc. There's even a photo booth where you can take pictures with the SM artists (obviously editted in but still pretty cool right?!) - it costs about 10,000won though so a bit pricey but you can decide if it's worth it or not XP (Me and my sister didn't do it but it was just cause we didn't have money on us at the time haha!)

We shopped around Myeongdong until around 7 when we decided to go get dinner from Myeongdong Gyoja (Address: 24 Myeongdong 2-ga, Jung-gu 100-809). It's a pretty famous place, or at least I think it must be because it was listed in one of our travel "must go to" places and there was quite a line for the restaurant. We had to wait about 7-10 minutes to get a seat and the entire restaurant was packed and waiters were bustling around trying to serve everyone. They actually only have 4 items on their menu, one being their famous mandu and the other three being either spicy something (forgot because we didn't order it haha :P), noodles (what we ordered), and some other thing that escapes my mind. We ordered the mandu and noodle soup for my mom, sister, and I and both dishes came out REALLY fast (which I suppose makes sense since they only have 4 dishes so they can easily prepare them a bit ahead of time) and we were stuffed after our meal (meaning the portions are a good hearty size). The great thing also was that neither of the dishes were spicy because we aren't used to all the spicy food Koreans love to make (not that it doesn't taste good!! But a break from all that spicy was nice). Their kimchi (freely provided of course) was REALLY spicy though! They use some sort of spice or something to flavor it that gives it this weird chemically (in my opinion) taste that actually didn't really  make the kimchi taste all that great. It could be that kimchi in America is just different and I wasn't used to the REAL kimchi since some other places we went to also had a similar flavored kimchi.

Entrance to Myeongdong Gyoja

Mandu!

The Kalgatsu (Noodle soup) dish

After dinner, we moved to our next location which was.... Namsan tower! It was a bit of a far walk from the subway station but it's pretty easy to make your way to the elevator that takes you to the cable cars which take you to the tower since all you have to do is look at the tower and walk towards it! :P You have to purchase a ticket to ride the cable cars and then wait in line to take the cable cars (we had to wait in line for about half an hour.. yes there was quite a lot of people..perhaps because it was a weekend?). They pack people into the cable cars quite tightly so make sure you hold onto your purse/wallet ..you never know.. The cable car ride lasts about 1-2 minutes (it isn't too long) but long enough for you to get a nice view as your ride up towards the tower! Once you reach where the tower is, you have to purchase ANOTHER ticket that lets you into the tower. When you enter the tower, you have to wait in yet again, a line, that takes you up to the top of the tower. This line went by a bit faster and the elevator ride up was super fast and they have a cool video for you to watch so you get to the top in no time! Once you get up to the tower, there isn't actually too much to do though other than take a few pictures of the scenery, maybe grab a coffee from the Twosome cafe located up there, or visit the couples area (yes there's an actually section of the top tower dedicated for couples). There was also the Locks of Love area which is at the bottom of the tower. For some reason I thought it looked a bit different but basically there's these giant tree looking blobs that are actually all piles of locks building on each other and couples go there and hang a lock as a symbol of eternal love~<3

A view of the tower from the bottom of it. (Don't know why I took the picture with it slanted like the Leaning Tower of Piza -__-)

A view from the top of Namsan Tower~ !

❤ Locks of Love ❤

After we finished exploring Namsan tower, it was about 11:00 PM and we STILL had to wait in line to take the cable car down to the other station we had first went to and there were still people coming up the cable car to see the tower! Anyways, we got back down to ground level and took the quite long walk back to the station. I feel like we were all completely exhausted because of the long day AND the fact that we were each holding what felt like 100lbs of face masks and cosmetic purchases we had accumulated in Myeongdong. It was a relief to finally get back to our home in Mapo and hit the sack. ^o^


So that's the end of day TWO~! I hope you guys enjoyed the, once again, length and overly detailed post. Please comment down below if you do enjoy these or if you want any more specifics on places we visited. I will probably be posting more photos later but I don't have access to all of them at the moment so look forward to that~! I will also be posting up my Korea haul later on! UNTIL NEXT TIME MY FELLOW READERS ^__^