Seoul for the Weekend!

Hello everyone!!! Monday, October 3rd was a holiday which means...we had a 3-day weekend! So what do we do on a 3-day weekend that also happens to be our friend's bday weekend??? We go to Seoul of course!


We caught a KTX Friday right after work, checked into our 6-person room in Hongdae, and went to Namsan Seoul Tower. Fluke and I went there before, but our friends hadn't and it's definitely something you have to do in Seoul. We rode the cable car, which was fun, and got to the ticketing office at 10:32. Guess what time they close the ticketing office even though the tower is open until midnight??? 10:30!!!! Even though we didn't go up to the top, we took pictures at the base of the tower and got some good pictures (but not with my camera because it is terrible with night photos :( Anyway, we did all this without eating dinner (unless you count coffees and Dunkin Donuts from Dongdaegu as our train snacks at 6pm). And we still had to walk down back into the city. After a walk down many, many, many stairs, we arrived at the subway stop and went back to Hongdae for none other than....Taco Bell!! Now, my family and friends know that I don't eat fast food at home (I still don't in Korea overall), but occasionally, I do have to bend my "no fast food" rule. I don't eat Taco Bell at home because I've gotten sick a couple times. I've had it twice now in Seoul....and not gotten sick!

Everland group pic!

Saturday was our Everland day! Everland is the largest amusement park in Korea. After a long bus ride, we arrived to Everland and saw Halloween decorations everywhere! It cost 35,000w to get in and it was TOTALLY worth it! We went on a few rollercoasters, but by far the best rollercoaster was the SK Express. SK Express is the steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world!!!!!!! I've been on a lot of rollercoasters, but I think SK Express has to be my favorite. It's a wooden coaster, so there aren't any upside-down loops (which are fun) or corkscrew turns (not so fun)--it's all about the super steep drop, twists and turns. We waited an hour for this ride and it was worth the wait. Then it was time for lunch (hamburgers) and back to SK Express  we went! We had seen people with what looked like Disney fastpasses, but we couldn't figure out how to get them. I asked one of the workers who said to go inside the SK Lounge so we went there (SK is a phone company). Apparently, if you have an SK cell phone, you can get the pass. We asked the lounge guy and he gave us 6 passes without showing any cell phones!!! We think he was being nice ^^ So we got to ride the coaster again and we only waited maybe 5 minutes!!! And that would have been 2 minutes if our friend didn't lose her pass in her bag ^^ Everland was a ton of fun, but we still had another amazing part of our Saturday left!! A place called, "Mercados." Mercados is a Brazilian BBQ place, which means all-you-can-eat delicious meat!!We were so hungry by dinnertime and the food was soooo good that--are you ready for this?--not one person took a food picture! It was our friend's bday dinner and we were so busy eating and enjoying our meal that we don't have any pictures because no one thought to take any! :(

Rollercoaster pic-round 2. We definitely were NOT ready the first time!

Sunday was our hiking day! We hiked Mount Bukhansan which is really easy to get to from one of the subway lines. We didn't have all day to hike, so we chose the shortest and easiest trail to one of the peaks. It still took us a while and it definitely was NOT easy (a LOT of stone stairs), but the view of Seoul beneath us was breathtaking. Check out the pictures to see what I mean...

After Bukhansan we went to a Mexican place called "Tomatillo." Tomatillo is set up like a Chipotle restaurant and it serves really good Mexican food. We love Mexican food (duh) and Daegu doesn't have the best Mexican restaurants (duh), but this is the second place we found in Seoul that has really good Mexican food! If we had time to go there twice, we would have. haha After an amazing lunch, we went back to the room to change into nicer clothes to go see a play! We saw the non-verbal dance play called, "Ballerina Who Loves Bboy." The dancing was so cool! The best part is...they encouraged everyone to take videos and pictures during the performance! I'm guessing to help promote it. Anyway, the show was really cool. It was in a theatre in Lotte World...which has an ice skating rink! So of course we decided to go ice skating after the show! We had pho for dinner and then called it a night--we were exhausted!

Monday we had to come back to Daegu, but first, Fluke and I had a dim sum lunch with a friend from UCI! The dumplings were really yummy and then we had boba for dessert! And that was really yummy too! Since we were in Myeongdong, a really popular shopping area, we did some shopping. We bought our first "couple clothing" item and met up with our friends when they finished their shopping sprees in Forever 21. A side note about couples clothing--it is really popular in Korea for a couple to wear matching clothes. We've seen couples with the same shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts, hats, sweatshirts, everything. I guess we figured it was time for us? Mostly, we just found super cute sweatshirts!

Boba!

Day 2 of Seoul!!

Hi everyone! Here's what we did Sunday, Day 2 of our trip in Seoul. Of course, the day began with peanut butter and jelly toast with coffee! and a subway ride...

63 City

We started at a place called 63 City. It is one of the tallest buildings in Seoul with lots to do inside and an observation level at the top. We had a nice walk from the subway and when we finally walked inside, the entryway had the feeling of a luxurious hotel. Since they did not have a map in English, we asked someone at the help desk where the food court was. He personally escorted us to part of the building, where another man escorted us to another part, and finally we entered an escalator. They took us to the extremely expensive French restaurant! We politely looked at the menu for maybe 30 seconds and turned around haha. (On a side note, everyone is always willing to help/direct/guide us to wherever we need to go. What happened at 63 City with the escorts is not unusual.) We ended up finding the food court on our own as well as the entrance to get to the observation level. After buying tickets, we took an amazingly fast glass elevator ride to the top. The views were incredible! The skyline of Seoul is unbelievable. Even though it was not a completely clear day, we got some good pictures and flip video. Oh, and the walls were covered with art. Not my taste exactly, but they were interesting. We saw a worker with a polariod camera so we figured she was there to take pictures with the Seoul skyline in the background. We awkwardly found out that was not the case. We now have a picture of us (actually pretty good), with a big picture of a baby crying in the background! It's pretty funny. We spent a good amount of time on this level before we returned to the food court and left 63 City for the next part of our adventure!

We found this when we were trying to find the food court.

View from the observation level in 63 City!

One of our favorite art pieces!

Original that we used as inspiration in our pose :)

 Han River

We walked by the Han River on our way back to the subway. We discovered a large park area with a small festival! We relaxed while looking out on the water, people watched (of course), and decided what to do next.

The Han River

 Myeongdong and Dongdaemun

 Back to Myeongdong we went! We walked around the large shopping area, bought Fluke a belt in Daiso, and decided we wanted to buy new wallets. We didn't buy any...yet! Then we made our way to Dongdaemun, the other main shopping area. We found Fluke an awesome pair of brown shoes to wear to work when the weather gets hot. (I think they are called boat shoes??) and don't worry--I did my shopping on Monday!

Namsan Seoul Tower

 At this point, we decided to take the bus to Namsan Seoul Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world! We saw views of Seoul during the day at 63 City, and now we wanted night views. Plus, Namsan Seoul Tower is super famous and one of those tourist-y things we had to do. We bought our tickets and ate dinner. We had a couple of options, but of course, we went to the burger place! We ordered burgers and chili cheese fries...they were soooo good!!! We wandered around the base of the tower and noticed all the Love Locks. We went to the gift shop to buy a lock so we could have one too! We carefully chose our lock location--it has a beautiful view of the city while still facing the tower. Next, we got churros! They were amazing and the perfect dessert since it was too cold for Cold Stone ice cream (the other option). When the sun went down, we went up to the top level of the tower. The views were amazing, but our cameras did not take amazing photos. Good thing they had professional photographers to take our picture! (Like they did at the Stratosphere in Vegas where you take the photo, look at it later, choose the background and buy it). We bought the pictures, spent a little more time at the top, then waited in a long line to go back down. When we got to the bus stop, we noticed a couple that looked like Adam and Ashley (Ashley was my roommate at orientation and Adam graduated from UCI). When we called out their names, the couple turned around!! We did not plan to meet up with them, but it was nice chatting for a bit. The bus came and we said goodbye, but we hope to see them when we go to Busan in a couple weeks.

View from the bottom.

Our lock!

Dinner!

Us with our lock!

View from Namsan Tower!

Back to Hongdae

By now we were exhausted, so we went back to Hongdae. Before heading to the room, we stopped at taco bell so Fluke could have his late-second dinner! When we went to sleep, we knew our plans for Monday, Day 3! Hope you enjoy our day-by-day entries and photos!