As most days begin, we started by waking up. Today is our final travel day in Korea, heading from Jeju island to Seoul. We packed up with a lot of spare time, and checked out of the hotel. The bus stop was just across the street and we didn’t have to wait long. We had a 20 minute bus ride, unfortunately standing the whole time. Additionally, we hadn’t been able to do a full load of laundry, so David’s bag was too full of clothes outside compression bags to be able to zip his daypack (so he had to wear the daypack on his front). The bags really do feel lighter as time goes on, and we had to check the big bag anyways, so it wasn’t horrible. We got to the airport a little over an hour of time to spare before the flight. In a total Angie move, it turns out that flights won’t even let you check in within 30 minutes of a flight, so her advice to show up a half hour before departure was horrific and we are so glad we didn’t listen. We get through check-in and security with around 30 spare minutes before boarding. They had us wait 5 minutes again for our checked bags to go through xray, but this time they had a cool video feed that you could see when your bag finally passed through so you can know when you can leave and go to security. We were happy that this time our bags didn’t get flagged for anything.
Caitlyn wanted to lay eyes on the gate before grabbing food, but in a very un-Caitlyn manner, she decided that roughly finding the gate area was enough, and we went into a restaurant nearby to get food. David got the tonkatsu (pork) cutlet and Caitlyn grabbed the spicy stir fried pork. David thought the tonkatsu was dry, but Caitlyn really enjoyed it.
We both liked the spicy pork and were happy that it was actually spicy! They were both served with a soup broth that was DELICIOUS. We went to 7/11 for some chewy snack for Caitlyn’s ears and some cold drinks for the plane. David has loved both a peach tea that is in all the stores as well as Tams. Tams is a diet soda very similar to Fanta, but the diet soda here doesn’t have the same artificial flavor that diet sodas in America tend to have.
David requested that Caitlyn give him the window seat this time, and she agreed. She did, however, establish dominance of the armrests very early in the boarding process. We all know that window seat gets the wall and the view, aisle seat gets some extra leg room in the aisle and the outer armrest, and middle seat gets both armrests. We had hoped that no one booked the aisle seat, but unfortunately it was booked. Caitlyn held strong until David reminded her that she hadn’t put her airplane earplugs in (for the pressure), and she lost her left armrests to the Neanderthal who had NO RESPECT FOR THE RULES OF THE AIRPLANE SEATS. This flight was actually pretty rough on both of our ears for some reason, and we struggled for the rest of the day with a feeling of pressure and fullness. Caitlyn even had radiating jaw and temple pain from the pressure, despite putting in her EarPlanes. We finished up the movie thay David had been watching and Caitlyn occasionally tuning into with subtitles (I Came By – 3/5☆ review). David ended up starting the Netflix movie “Luther: The Fallen Sun”, only getting 20 minutes in but LOVING it so far.
We landed in Seoul, grabbed our bags, and then tried to figure out transport on the hour+ trip to our hotel. We messed around on Naver looking for the best route, and realized we had just missed the most direct bus. Eventually, we realized that the hour-long taxi ride would be less than $20 USD, and public transportation options involved multiple transfers between buses or subway lines. We don’t want to make this a habit, but it seemed to be our best option so we splurged! We found a cab parked along the airport, and asked him if he would take us. He asked to see the address and decided he would be up for it. Traffic was pretty rough, but we eventually just about make it to our hotel. The driver stops a few streets off from where our navigation app wanted to take us, but the driver seemed insistent and kept saying something in Korean that we weren’t able to translate.
We get out, fine with walking a short distance, and head towards our hotel. We eventually arrive, realizing that the street into the hotel is not able to be driven along, being too narrow for a car. We go to check in and two super nice young men help us with the process. They offer to give us a 5% discount if we cancel the booking.com and just book through the hotel, but we were too concerned about being double charged. They explained that booking doesn’t have a right to charge customers before consulting the hotel. It didn’t feel scammy, honestly, but we declined as we don’t have reliable phone coverage if we needed to call a customer support. Obviously they didn’t want to have to be paid through a 3rd party and take a little loss, which we totally understand (and wish that we could have), but it didn’t make sense. They were super nice and explained all of the offered amenities and facilities. They are a no-entry hotel, never ever coming in a room without express permission. They reiterated this multiple times, really intent on making sure we understand this. We like this, as we had been casually told in Hiroshima that no one comes in the room unless asked, leaving fresh towels in a bag outside the door, yet found our towels replaced inside the room later that day. We had elected in a windowless room for Seoul to save 15 or 20 USD that we could spend on a meal, as we don’t really spend time looking out the window anyways. They let us check in a little early and we headed up to our room.
It was a nice, big room with a large bathroom with a tiny tub only fit for toddlers to actually lay down. We freshened up some and headed to a nearby market just south of us called Namdaemun Market.
There were souvenier shops, clothing stores, and some food stalls and shops. We checked out some souvenirs and handkerchiefs before Caitlyn decided to try an egg bread (bread with a hardboiled egg inside more or less). It was delicious and the bread was great, but the egg didn’t add that much.
We kept walking and found a coffee shop. David ordered a iced caramel lattee and Caitlyn ordered a toffee nut lattee. The caramel was good but the toffee nut was out of this world. We were both on cloud 9, absolutely instantly in love with Seoul. There is so much to do and so much to see, with such an active community and tons of different neighborhoods.
We next went to the Seoul 7017 Walkway, described as Seoul’s version of the NYC highline. It was a beautiful walkway on a bridge, lined with nice potted plants and good overlooks of the city.
About halfway in, we found a cool round building sitting along the walkway. It turns out to be a cafe, selling teas, coffees, and some interesting mixed juice cocktails. We went inside and grabbed a drink called “The Night of Seoul”, described as “this bright refreshing drink is a combination guava citrus & secret powder. Perfect for any time of the night”. It was a tasty iced fruit juice with little guava chunks and we sipped on it while we walked the rest of 7017.
The sun was just about setting, giving us the most beautiful view.
Towards the end of this walkway was a rooftop garden area that we checked out. We walked around a minute and found an indoor art gallery advertised.
We descended down a spiral stairway towards the art gallery. It was insanely disappointing, being a few lights and a few pieces of “art”, like supporting columns having different paint color sample cards glued to each column.
We walked out of this “art gallery” quickly and headed back to the rooftop to figure out our next move. We then walked over to the Myeong-Dong Market. This was amazing, packed with tons of people, shops, restaurants, food stalls, and more. We decided to check out a cat cafe, boasting more than 50 cats. Apparently many cat cafes have entry fees, but this place simple requires a purchased beverage for each person and offers unlimited time, which again is supposedly not the norm. We take off our shoes outside the cafe and put on rubber slippers supplied outside.
We step in and are offered a place to sit and given a large plastic drawstring bag to “protect your belongings from cats peeing on them”. We sat down at a table and pretty quickly the biggest cat either of us have ever seen laid down on the middle of our table. All this cat wanted was constant pets while he sat and napped. It turns out his name is Laon and he was such a sweet chonk.
Dozens of cats walked around, lounged on chairs and tables, or sat high up on cat trees. We found out why they offered the bags pretty quickly, as we saw a hairless cat back up to a wall and absolutely spray the living hell out of it and nonchalantly walk away. Later we saw a cat jump on a table when the people who had their stuff there had stood up, and proceeded to pee all over their bag. No idea why they decided not to put their stuff in the safety bags. Cats also kept eating their cake that they bought as they seemed to be unaware that animals will try to eat food left out.
We pet a ton of cats, and each had our favorites (Laon for David, Kakao for Caitlyn), and even got to feel a hairless cat. It wad a super strange feeling petting a cat without fur, but a cool experience. We each grabbed a sweet tea or coffee which were both delicious.
We spent a good bit of time here before deciding we should move along and grab some dinner. Caitlyn wanted to get a beauty facemask (not a COVID-style facemask as David confusedly accepted it as for the first 10 minutes of searching for a store). We stopped by a few stores, but most of them sold them in quantities of 10-20 or more, and Caitlyn only wanted a few at most. We finally found a shop selling them individually and Caitlyn grabbed a few.
We then found a nicely rated Korean BBQ spot named Wangbijib Chinese Embassy Store and headed in and upstairs to try it. This was by far the best Korean BBQ spot we have had so far. We ordered the marinated short ribs and the marinated pork galbi, as well as the Caitlyn & David special (a soju and a beer). The sides came out and were nice, but the meat itself was so good and marinated perfectly that we mostly just had this with some salt or sauce. We found a sign offering a free dish if you leave a review with a picture(dish was either kimchi, soup, or chilled noodles). We left a deserved positive review, and told our waitress we would try the soup. We finished the meat and it was so good that we actually decided we would order one more small portion of shortrib. The soup came out (tasty, but not life-changing), and then the final shortrib came out.
All of these meats were cooked by the servers, and they clearly knew what they were doing. We liked that they actually separated the cooked meat on either side of the table to ensure that we both got similar portions. It is always tricky to portion out fairly as you typically don’t get a plate and it is hard to remember how much you picked off the grill.
We were feeling very full but not food-coma overly stuffed. We walked around the Myeong-Dong area a little more before we headed back to hotel to sleep. Uncharacteristically, we did not get coffees as we wanted to do another cafe tomorrow. Back in the room, we remembered we had to do laundry for tomorrow. Thankfully there is a laundry machine and dryer on the 2nd floor. The dryer was in use, but the washer was open. It was a little past 11:00pm at this point, and the washing machine would end up taking until around midnight to finish. David set an alarm on his phone and we headed up to the rooftop lounge to check it out.
This was a cool spot – fake turf lined the floor on the exterior, making the rooftop feel a little less…rooftop-ey. There was a small separate area for smokers and a larger area with some picnic tables and a great view of the city. We brought the iPad so we could watch a movie while we waited for the washing machine to finish, while we did some light work on the blog. After maybe 20 minutes, Caitlyn began to notice some mosquitos and thought she may have gotten a bite or two.
We decided to head into an indoor room on the rooftop so avoid this. Inside, there are two hanging out areas, with some chairs and couches, as well as a microwave and some other kitchen amenities. They have plenty of cups, silverware, and dishes, but ask you to wash them yourself in a room off to the side with a large industrial sink.
The alarm went off to change the laundry, so David ran down to move it over. Unfortunately, the clothes that were in the dryer were still sitting there. With no surfaces or basket to put these clothes in, David waited for the person who ran the load to come down and grab their clothes. A minute or two later, a woman came and asked if I’m waiting for the washer. I told her I just washed my clothes and I’m waiting for the dryer, and she said that apparently there’s a problem and the front desk attendant is coming up now to work on it. The attendant and a man come up and apparently his clothes still weren’t dry after a load, so he put in 3000 won more to run it again but the machine ate his money. The attendant puts in 3000 more and he starts the load again. Unfortunately, this takes 45 minutes so we had to wait again to even move our clothes into the dryer. David headed back upstairs and we waited another while longer.
Eventually, we moved downstairs back into our room. Caitlyn went to sleep not long after this, but David ended up having to run his clothes two cycles as well, keeping him up another hour and a half, finally able to get to bed around 2:00am.
David’s Thoughts of the Day: We instantly fell in love with Seoul. It is very active, with tons of restaurants, cafes, and people walking around. There are countless things to do and see. We honestly hadn’t loved Korea yet as much as we had hoped, but Seoul is amazing. There is an aire or vibe of energy and excitement we haven’t felt elsewhere in Korea. We are very glad that we ended in Seoul as oppoed to starting here as we had originally planned, as we feel each city has gotten better and better with the route we chose.
Caitlyn’s thoughts of the day: Seoul instantly gave me the feeling of a place that I knew I was going to enjoy. Its hard to put a finger on exactly what it is, but it’s just a feeling and I am so excited to continue to explore.
Steps walked: 18,248
Miles walked: 8.75
Bluming Travelers 