My Favorite Things: Seoul, South Korea

Welcome back to my second post in my series of blogs about my winter travels. My second stop, after Shanghai, was Seoul, South Korea!

I think I was definitely blessed in that unlike the typical tourist, I had many native Korean friends who were gracious enough to show Richard and me around. My lovely friend Semi even let me stay at her apartment in Hongdae. Without Semi and BoYoung and Ran and Luigi and all my other friends, knowing where to go and how to order probably would've been much more difficult, but here are some of my favorite things from Korea anyway, and if you go, you can do them too!

1. Shopping in Kangnam

I love this area. The subway station at Kangnam has a HUUUGE underground shopping area, where Richard and I stocked up on BB creams at just a few of the MANY cosmetics stores. I'm not kidding about the "many." Literally every other store was a cosmetics store.

Richard buying his cosmetics.

Above ground there is a whole street of shops and boutiques, including popular department stores like Uniqlo. I bought a nice coat at one of the boutiques!

There was also a SUPER SUPER CUTE knick knacks store that sold pretty much everything: stationary, house things, makeup, hair accessories... I wanted to buy everything. Richard bought these boot holders for his mom. I don't have a picture of it, but it was pretty much like this picture I found on google images:

Kangnam is also where Ran treated us to a delicious duck BBQ. Yum! Thanks Ran! <3 <3 <3

2. The Teddy Bear Museum at the N Seoul Tower

THIS PLACE WAS SO CUTE. The N Seoul Tower is an observatory tower where you can go up and look out over Seoul. On the first floor of the tower they have a teddy bear museum! It's a walk through museum that displays the history of Korea from ancient times all the way to present day using teddy bears! The bears are dressed as people and even move in some of the displays. I took a picture with every one.

Look! An ancient Korean bear scholar!

I'll spare you and only put up one picture of me posing with life size bears.

The view from the top of the tower was really pretty at night.

Outside, there is a super couply patio area, where lovebirds can go and leave a lock on the fence as some sort of symbol of everlasting love or whatever. I don't know - I prefer the bears.

Being couply

After leaving the tower, Luigi led us back to his university where we ate jokbal (pig's feet) at a nearby restaurant. It was super delicious, but it looked like the restaurant doesn't see tourists very often. If I wanted to go back there again (which I do), I would definitely need Luigi to take me haha.

It was so delicious we forgot to take a picture before we ate it all.

3. Hongdae

If you are a young adult or want to experience Korean contemporary culture, this is the place to be. It's like a college student's dream. Hongdae is an area just full of little shops: coffee shops, especially, but also restaurants, boutiques, cosmetics stores, etc. Seriously, this place is just PACKED with college-age students filling up every coffee shop on every corner of every street. Semi, Boyoung, Richard and I had coffee at the place where they filmed the Coffee Prince Korean drama.

We also met up with our other friends, Min, HaJin, Emi, Kim, Luigi, and Seulbee to get kimchi jigae (kimchi stew) for dinner.

Yummm

Afterwards Seulbee suggested we go to a more Korean style pub to drink makgeolli, a traditional Korean rice wine that they drink out of bowls.

It was really fun just to hang out here with friends and experience some contemporary Korean culture!

4. Brunch buffet at the Hilton in Seoul with BoYoung.

Okay, this is probably not something most people do when they visit Korea, BUT how could I not mention our fabulous meal?? BoYoung was a great tour guide of Seoul, and on our last day there, her parents treated us to a buffet at the Millenium Hilton hotel right outside Seoul station. It was such a treat! :)

Other things we did:

Of course Richard and I also did other touristy things like visit Gyeongbokgung (the palace), Cheonggyecheon (manmade waterway), Myeongdong (more shopping), Insadong (souvenir shopping), and Bukchon (traditional village), which were very fun and interesting. If we were to come back, though, we probably won't need to do all those tourist things again. We just want to hang out with friends. :)

Food:

Richard and I were really glad we tried the jokbal because it's definitely something not really common in southern California, at least to our knowledge. Semi and BoYoung took us to more places to eat in InsaDong and around SamcheongDong but I can't remember the names of the food, sadly. BUT one other food we really liked, besides all the delicious things already mentioned, was this spicy ddukbokki from Hot Dduk in Kangnam!

But really, EVERYTHING we ate was so good. I love Korean food. I will definitely go back to Korea just to eat and shop.

Whew! And that's my Korean experience! As you can see, I loved it!

Next up: Tokyo!