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~!

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 ^__^

Adventures in Seoul, Korea: Day 1

We started off the trip by arriving at the airport around 2PM from Hong Kong and meeting with a representative of the residential home that we would be staying out. He helped us get our "egg" (aka wifi hotspot) from the airport and drove us to the residential home where we were pleasantly surprised with. The website for the residential home we stayed at is: www.godseoul.com and you guys should all go check it out if you're looking for a pretty cheap but nice place to stay at in Seoul (though the entire website is in Chinese so if you don't know how to read Chinese.. well there's always Google translate!). The owners of the residential home spoke Cantonese, some English, and Korean and were super kind and helpful. Our "home" was located in Mapo and was literally right next to the Mapo subway station which was super convenient!  Plus, everyday someone would come in and tidy up the house a bit which kept it nice and clean for the 7 days that we stayed in Seoul. I'm glad we chose to stay at a residential home rather than a hotel because it was about the same price, if not cheaper, as all the hotels we were looking at, but it included a stove (with all utensils, dishware, pots&pans, etc included!), washing&drying machine in one (never seen before so I thought it was super cool!), free wifi, TV, and many other amenities that most hotels don't have! Okay enough of my gushing of our living area - no I'm not being paid to say all these good things about them, I really just enjoyed it and felt quite nice at home! The website has so many pictures of the room (I forgot to take actual pictures) but it really does look like the pictures! Honestly the pictures don't even show how amazing the place is.


After we had gotten settled into our room, it was about 4:00 PM so we decided to go out and eat a late lunch/early dinner. There were a lot of restaurants - almost all were Korean BBQ shops - near our apartment/home so we didn't have to walk far before we found a place we wanted to eat at. I must say I think all the restaurants were a tad bit expensive and even the place we chose, it cost 35,000 won for a plate of beef!! That's basically $35 US dollars which is crazy expensive and there wasn't even that much meat! That was the second most expensive meal we ate in Korea - coming after our meal at the seafood market where we totally got ripped off. However, the meal was still good (though the taste did not quite match the price).

After we left, we stopped by a GS-25 which is basically like our American 7-11 store and filled up our T-cards (if you live in Hong Kong or have ever visited Hong Kong and know what an "Octopus card" is, then the T-card is Korea's version of an Octopus card). For those of you who don't know what a T-card or an Octopus card is, they are both cards that can be filled with money to be used to pay for the subway, buses, and even some shops or stores will accept them. T-cards are a must-have if you will be traveling in Seoul and using the subway because then you will not have to purchase a subway ticket each time you go into the station and you can very conveniently "beep" your T-card which will cover the subway fee. For our entire 7 day trip which was packed with subway rides from touristy place to place, we used a little bit more than 20,000 won which wasn't too bad - the subway is actually quite cheap, much cheaper to take than a taxi and less confusing than a bus since there is enough English for most people to get by on. As a warning though, the subway stations in Korea are HUGE (waaay bigger than the ones in Hong Kong). You usually have to walk a good amount if you're trying to transfer to another line and it's not hard to get lost or go the wrong way when you're looking for you subway train. ALSO, for all my fellow Hong Kongers, the subway trains are not as frequent as the ones in Hong Kong (which come like every less than 5 minutes), so you'll often see people running through the subway stations in Korea trying to catch the subway train because they don't want to wait for the next one.

Subway art <3

After filling up our T-cards, we went back to our hotel to go chill until around 7:00 when we headed down to the subway station and headed off to the Namsung bridge (also known as the Banpo Bridge) to see the rainbow waterfall show which started at 8pm. The bridge isn't very close to the nearest subway exit, and we had to walk about 10 minutes, following some instructions my sister had found online and while we were a little bit sketched out when we had to go underground, we made it safely to the bridge! ;D I'll admit we got lost quite a few times the entire trip, but it's kind of inevitable with all the super not clear walking directions blogs give (some of them weren't even accurate..) and Google maps failed us and could never come up with walking instructions even though it knew our location and the location of our destination. -__-' Anyways we were also going to go visit the Floating Island which is right next to the bridge but to our utter disappointment, apparently on rainy or cloudy days, the Floating Island isn't lit up/doesn't have the nice show display that it usually has. It was a bummer since that day was pretty cloudy and so when we arrived to see a boring little island with no pretty lights and waterfalls, we were definitely disappointed. We were also worried that the Namsung bridge show might alsoo be cancelled at about 8:10PM the rainbow waterfalls started! I took a TON of pictures and the show was definitely worth the wait! The show lasted about 20 minutes and had super cute accompanying music (kudos to whoever chose to play Jason Mraz ^__^).

Photo of the Namsung bridge before the show

Photo of the Namsung bridge during the show. Ooooh pretty colors~! ^__^

 Once the show was over, we walked back to the station to head back to our home in Mapo but somehow we found the Gangnam Underground Shopping Center (the entrance looks like a subway entrance) and so we decided to stop by and take a "quick" look - that quick look turned out to be more than an hour. We didn't even finish looking at all the shops because many started to close down since it was quite late but also, the underground shopping area is HUGE. There were many jewelry, accessory, and clothing shops down the halls and they were all pretty decently priced. Some places you can haggle in Seoul, but this shopping mall is not one of them. You don't really need to haggle here though because there are so many sales on clothes for 5000 or 10,000 won!  It's also connected to the subway though so we were able to find the subway entrance there and take our way back to Mapo.

A photo of the Gangnam Underground Shopping Center - as you can see..there is no end! Endless shopping~!

This was one of the jewelry shops we looked at and the guy apparently wanted me to take a picture of him (or well he said "Kimchi!!" and pointed at my camera so yea.. LOL. He was okay with it though and actually asked to see the picture haha. (For those of you who don't know, while in the US we say "Cheeseee" when taking a picture, Koreans say "Kimchi!")

There is a supermarket in the Mapo station that closes around 10PM so we stopped by it to grab some food for the next morning such as eggs, milk, bread, and ramen. Also, as a heads up, FRUIT in Seoul is crazy expensive. 4 small baby bananas that weren't even that nice looking cost about 9000 won (!!) and all other fruits are so expensive. We were super exhausted after our first day and crashed almost the moment we got back. Overall, our first day (which wasn't even a full day) was super fun and I was so ready for the rest of our trip to get started~!

I hope this extremely long and overly detailed post will help any of you who will be visiting Seoul soon and look for my next day posts! ^__^