Walking in the Jagalchi Fish Market, Running in Dadaepo Beach, and Hiking in Seoul

Hello!!!
So last weekend, we went to Busan with our friends! The main reason for the trip was the Dadaepo Beach race~ I signed up for my third 10km and 3 of our friends signed up for the 5km!! We figured it made sense to stay in Dadaepo to make the next morning easy, but after walking near the race start and not finding much, we decided to stay in the Jagalchi/Nampo area of Busan instead! This area is full of restaurants, shops, bars, and...the Jagalchi Fish Market! We spent the rest of our Saturday afternoon/evening exploring this area. Check out some of our pics!

One of the entrances to the fish market.

View from the top of the big Lotte department store in Nampo.

Sunday morning we made our way back to Dadaepo! It was an easy subway ride to Sinpyeong and then there were shuttle buses from the station to the race starting point. The race route was flat and along the coastline so we had a nice ocean breeze and pretty view! It was a perfect race day and...I finished the race in 53:28! That's 5 minutes faster than my first 10km time!!! I guess all my training worked! The picture below was from the Daegu Stadium race. The pictures of the Busan race aren't online yet...

Where's Jenn and Fluke?!?! I'll give you a hint...I'm wearing grey shorts and a white shirt. Still can't find us? We're to the right of the "S" in LEPORTS. ^^

Anyway, enough about running! Let's talk about hiking...
Two weeks ago, Fluke and I went up to see our friend in Seoul. We decided to hike Bukhansan again but start at a different point this time. We hiked on a ridge line (really fun and scary and awesome) AND made it to Baegundae Peak, the highest peak in Seoul (836.5 meters tall!!)... and it only took us...6 hours!!! Yes, we hiked for 6 hours! Definitely didn't start the morning thinking we would hike all day, but that's how it ended up! Sunday we headed back to Daegu, but first we went to Tomatillo to get some yummy Mexican food! We of course got 2 burritos to-go to have for dinner later that night. ^-^ Here's some of our favorite pictures from our hike and our food~

The start of our day! About 10am...

See Fluke way at the top?!?!

Our view of Seoul. It wasn't a clear day unfortunately.

Top of the ridge line part of our hike!

View from the ridge line.

On our way to Bagundae Peak...

We made it!! 
It looks cold...but it wasn't at all!! Just really cloudy.

Now for some food pics!!! So yummy!!!! ^-^*

Burrito Special at Tomatillo!!

Nachos at Tomatillo!

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!

Seoul Day 3! (finally...)

Let's talk about Day 3 of Seoul! Ya, I know...took me long enough to write about it. We've been really busy! After this, we have a blog post about our weekend in Busan, a city on the east coast of Korea! Anyway, back to Seoul!


Lotte World
After our breakfast of peanut butter and jelly toast with a cup of coffee, we headed to Lotte World! An amusement park outside the center of Seoul. It took us awhile to get there and then when we did, we saw an ENORMOUS line of people waiting to enter the park. After a quick chat with a woman in the information booth, we learned that it was too crowded and too long of a line to enter the part of Lotte World that required admission. Instead, we went exploring! We found an ice rink. Debated waiting in the line and then left. We found an arcade! So we played the basketball shooting game and the alligator hit-their-heads game. It was awesome. Next, we found a bowling alley and a shooting range! By this time, our friends were almost there and it was lunch time. So...we headed to the food court area in the Lotte department store. Yes, there is an enormous department store connected to a large amusement park. After lunch, we tried to go bowling but it was too crowded. We decided to leave Lotte World and head back to Dongdaemun to hang out before our dinner plans with our friend, Christa. 

Playing the alligator game!

One of the parts that required admission. We took it from the ice rink and restaurant area. 

A random fountain in a lobby area. Reminded us of Caesar's Palace in Vegas.

At one of the entrances. 

Dongdaemun
It started raining! So of course, our next idea was to go see a movie! We reserved our seats for Source code (movie theatres do assigned seating--it's awesome) and then spent a little over an hour shopping. In this time, Fluke bought 2 shirts, a pair of pants and a wallet. I bought a dress, a shirt and a wallet. There was so much to choose from and so much to look at! We still have to get his pants hemmed and I have not worn the dress yet. But...the weather is just now starting to get warm, so I'll be wearing it soon! After our mini shopping spree, we went to the movie! Source Code was an amazing movie. I highly recommend it to everyone. 


Dinner with Christa!
Christa took Fluke and me to a Mexican restaurant (of course haha) called Dos Tacos. We shared a plate of nachos and each got a burrito. It was definitely good Mexican food! The owners took a polaroid of us to put on their wall and Christa really wanted our copy, so she kept it. After dinner, we headed to the dog cafe! Please refer to our earlier post for more details on that! After the dog cafe, it was still early, so we headed to a norebang! Norebang is like karaoke. They had an incredible selection of English pop songs and we had trouble choosing which ones we really wanted to do. After singing for an hour and laughing a lot, we decided to call it a night!

Christa and me with a dog in the Dog Cafe!

We had an amazing weekend in Seoul and will definitely go back sometime. Phew, this concludes our blog posts on Seoul! Hope you enjoyed reading!

love and miss you,

Jenn

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!