South Korea has been on my mind since late 2020. I’ve been wanting to go back to experience the country as an adult and this time around I will get to experience it with Juanpa. It is always the most fun to experience a new country with him. I am generally pretty good at planning things out while he brings out a lot more spontaneity. I am always focused on getting to our destination and he is good at noticing things we pass by while going to our destination. It makes it a really fun trip and this one is just that. Ok, 가자!

Day 2: First Full Day in Seoul

We arrived the previous day in Korea around 7pm the night before, the flight was a little rough for Juanpa. We got ourselves some T-Money in the form of Line Friends bunnies (so so cute!) Found our way to the hotel, got some room service food and rested. We woke up bright and early (thanks jetlag) and looking for breakfast. Our close friend SungHa 성하 recommended Isaac’s Toast 이삭토스트 and we were very lucky that there were one right across from our hotel. It was DELICIOUS and filling, just the right thing for us to start the day.
After breakfast, it was still quite early and we decided to walk over to MyeongDong 명동 area in search of Café Swith Sol. It is this cute cafe filled with cute characters in every corner! There were no customer just yet so we got to enjoy the cafe just the two of us for a little bit. It was excellent. After that we walked over to Myeongdong Cathedral area to get a little more familiar with the cityscape around. It was a chilly morning, my preferred temperature to walk around.

**This was a really interesting thing we noticed all around South Korea, structures that felt unmoving surrounded by all these modern buildings. I kinda admire the way they stuck out.**

Namsangol Hanok Village 남산골한옥마을

We looked at the map and thought, hey, let’s just walk on over to this Hanok Village on our list rather than taking a train or public transportation. It was definitely the right decision because it is so good to see the city. The air was crisp and I just enjoyed the first bit of getting to know a city by sound and sight. The walkability in Seoul was really great for us. We arrived at Namsangol Hanok Village and I instantly fell in love with Hanok Villages. I just love peering into the older era and imagining the kind of “slow living” they must have had.

I know life is never simple for any era or for any people, but I love imagining that they were.

Here are the scenes from that morning in Namsangol Hanok Village. The air was crisp, we got to wander around without have to navigate other people. They just lifted their outdoor masking policy then but we wore ours because it kept us very warm. There were certain spots in the village with clear view of Namsan Tower, which is where we are headed next. Just a few more favorite pictures below before we leave.

N Seoul Tower | 엔 서울타워

The next stop to our journey is Namsan Tower or Seoul Tower. We had to take a taxi over because it was quite confusing trying to get to it by foot. We used both Naver and KakaoMaps to navigate because GoogleMaps isn’t great in South Korea. It is serviceable but I’d suggest downloading Naver or Kakao Maps, they are definitely more accurate. Anyway, it didn’t take too long to get there AND I got to use my cute bunny t-money to pay the fare. It was very convenient!

We made a little mistake of purchasing round-trip tickets for the cable car. I think if the weather permits/possible, going up with cable car and coming down by foot is the best way to go. We ended up forgoing our way back ticket in favor of walking down the path. It was a nice path with clear views of Seoul in every corner we stop. It was genuinely lovely. We got very lucky that day with the weather as well because it was gorgeous clear skies.

After walking around for quite a bit, we got quite hungry. We slowly meandered and found our way back to MyeongDong to find us lunch at Myeongdong Kyoja 명동교자. They specialize in Kalguksu 칼국수 which is a knife cut wheat flour noodles served in savory broth. We almost ended up going to other restaurants along the way due to hunger but I was glad we resisted because this was really really delicious. This was also the first time I’ve had kimchi in Korea and y’all, let me tell you… I cried. Not to be dramatic, but honestly I had tears in my eyes. What kimchi have I been eating in the states? We also ordered their steamed mandu, both were great and super filing without being too expensive. YAY!

After the tasty meal, we walked some more. This time we got to explore some alleyways with cool murals, little stationery shops and got to do a little bit of shopping. We were pretty wired up so we decided to keep walking and towards our next stop: Deoksu Palace 덕수궁. There were a small entrance fee, I can’t remember if we had to pay by cash or we used our t-money. It was worth visiting just to see what they look like and enjoy the outdoors when the weather is pleasant. We didn’t spend too much time there because we got kind of tired halfway through and needing a little break.

We decided to walk to our hotel and along the way we stopped by Daiso to get expandable folder to store my growing amount of stationery I already purchased even though it was our first day (ha ha ha). We ended up resting for a bit before dinner time. I got a little bit of time to start my travel journal before dinner which was a quick restaurant nearby after looking around for a good dinner spot. It was rather difficult to find a good sitting down dinner spot around MyeongDong for us - which was surprising! We finally found a dinner spot but it was really just okay so I won’t put it here. See below for some journal pages from Day 1 and a little reel.

Day 3: Train to Busan 부산행

Y’all, I made so many jokes about 🧟 zombies. If y’all haven’t seen the movie, please watch it, it is excellent. Anyway, we were getting on the 10am train to Busan. We got some quick breakfast from Lotteria. A couple spicy chicken burgers and fries! It was filling and that was lucky because getting to our hotel to Busan was a JOURNEY and it wasn’t a very good one.

The train took about 3hours which was quite amazing because we were going pretty far down south. I spent that time reading and drawing and I am pretty sure Juan was playing Zelda. There are so many games out this year I can’t keep track! We arrived at the station and found a taxi to our hotel: Signiel Busan. The journey from the station to the hotel was about 45minutes by car. It would have been fine if our taxi driver wasn’t driving like a maniac and the taxi reeked of cigarettes. It was quite awful being in there for that amount of time. It made us pretty queasy and I was quite cranky by the time we got to the hotel room at 3pm. We (I) were past hungry and most places we found are closed in between lunch and dinner. Juan had to quickly try and find a place we can get some food and we walked on over, feeling quite discombobulated.

We finally had a burger and pasta at this place called… Burger and Pasta Haeundae. 😂 It was decently tasty but I don’t know if I could recommend due to our state of hangry-ness. After the meal though, we (I) finally feel more like ourselves. The mood lightened quite a bit and we spent time walking along Haeundae 해운대해수욕장 beach. Props to JuanPa for handling this hangry lioness with patience and grace. My dessert after was Tang Hu Lu 탕후루 which is actually a northern chinese snack but became quite popular in Korea. It is basically skewered fruits in hard sugar syrup. It was a good snack for walking alongside the beach.

We walked all the way to Haeundae Blue Line Park where I wanted to get on this sky capsule ride. A note: it is quite difficult to figure out ways to purchase tickets online for some of these things because I couldn’t get my Kakao/Naver account due to the fact that my number isn’t korean phone number - I think. So we did have to just hope for the best and wing it a bit. I don’t generally enjoy winging it in countries I’ve never spent enough time in. The last time I was in South Korea was when I was 17 with a tour group. My anxiety was high when I found out that the tickets were sold out because this was something I look forward to doing in Busan. We walked a bit to walk off my anxieties and finally decided we may have to switch up our plans for the 2 days we’ll be in Busan.

We ended up making our way to Haedong Yonggungsan Temple 해동 용궁사 for a night time viewing of the temple rather than early morning the next day. I’ve never seen a temple at night before but it ended up being quite lovely. The temperature was starting to drop and we quickly made our way back closer to our hotel area.

That night was a tough one for us because neither of us are our best selves. We were run down and pretty exhausted from the travel of the day. We ended the day early and hoping that we could sleep it off and make the next day a little better. Here’s a reel from the day, it didn’t show a lot of frustrations but we sure had them!

Day 4: Sky Capsule + Gamcheon Culture Village

We woke up early in the morning, talked through the night before and promised each other to have a better day in Busan! We did end up having a really beautiful day. Got up early to this view in the picture below and I can feel slowly the anxieties from the night before drain away. We watched the sunrise before getting ready for the day ahead of us.

First stop: line up for Sky Capsule tickets! We walked over to the station and got very lucky there were no lines quite yet. We got our tickets and breakfast. Mine is red bean taiyaki and Juan had korean corn dog! We enjoyed the breakfast a whole lot and felt optimistic about the day ahead.

Sky Capsule from Mipo Station → Cheongsapo Station

This was such a cute little experience for us. We got the one way ticket for a private capsule for 2. We ended up with a yellow capsule, the interior is pretty spacious yet still cozy. It is a very touristy thing to do but we thoroughly enjoyed it. The view on that day was really gorgeous as well. Juanpa spent a little time recording the creaking sounds in the train while I savor the view and took a bajillion pictures.

After the ride we walked all the way back to our hotel which was close to Mipo Station. We checked out of the hotel because we are headed to another hotel in the city center of Busan. After checking out, we decided to find some place to eat before going on another 45 minutes taxi ride. We definitely learned our lesson from the day before.

I really wanted to try this seafood spot: Mipojib 미포집 but unfortunately by the time we got there the line has grown so much it would have taken about 1.5hrs to get a seat. So, we had to pivot and found a local shop. I am glad we did because they didn’t speak any english and ordering the menu consists of me apologetically pointing at the picture and try to not butcher the name of the dishes in korean too badly. The shop was small and the ladies working was so lovely. We ordered a couple dishes from them, including spicy ramen and tteokbokki! They were very yummy and tasted homemade with love.

The taxi ride we took to our new hotel was INFINITELY better than the one we took yesterday. It was clean, the taxi driver was kind and polite. We are staying the night at Commodore Hotel Busan. When I did research on what hotel to stay in Busan I came across this 1979 hotel with with the concept of a royal palace from the Joseon era. The exterior of the hotel is just gorgeous. The room looked traditional and we did have to sleep in a separate bed but it wasn’t bad. One thing to note: since they are an older hotel, at night it did get quite warm and since they have central ac/heater, we couldn’t adjust the temperature to our liking. It was a very warm night of sleep for us.

The weather in this portion of our trip has been so magnificent that we decided to go on a long walk over to Gamcheon Culture Village 감천문화마을. It was quite a walk but we loved the fact that we got to sightsee so many things along the way. There were stairs everywhere and beautiful murals. We walked probably about 2.5 miles before we reached

Gamcheon Culture Village 감천문화마을

The area is known for its layered streets, twisted alleys, and brightly painted houses! I wanted to check it out because one can actually collect some stamps (I am a sucker for stamps and mementos). I am really glad we went there because we got to enjoy some dessert, hunt for some stamps and the view of these houses were really cool to look at.
The dessert we had was honey toast and y’all it was sooooo good. They were soft and not too sweet, the perfect dessert after a long walk to get to the village.

There were quite a few small shops along the way. Juanpa got to record some 3d wood-printer that sounded so cool. I got to pick up some souvenirs and ate some street food along the way. It was so nice. There were definitely people around but since it was winter and low season, we managed to get around people easily and it wasn’t too bothersome. Another thing that was really cool is that people are actually living in these houses. So when we walked down some twisted alleyways there were signs to keep quiet and be respectful to the residents of the village. After this we needed a little walking break so we took a taxi back to our hotel. We walked 24k steps that day!

After a couple hours of resting at the hotel we decided we should go find ourselves some dinner. We were hunting for some good food. Surprisingly we had a time finding food in Busan, BUT, we found an amazinngggg korean fried chicken place in the bustling nightlife area of Busan: Nari Chicken 나리 치킨. It was a small shop tucked in between bars as I remembered them. I tried out a little bit of Korean and a little bit of pointings at the menu. We ended up ordering their spicy fried chicken, some wedges and a couple beers. There were only a few tables inside the restaurant and people dining there was all locals! It was a really good sign already and when the food came, the chicken was spicy like the owner warned us and it was so delicious. Hands down the best fried chicken we had in Korea. After that we walked around a little bit before heading back to the hotel. It was quite late and I was craving some quiet after being in such a bustling area. Here’s a few pictures of the food AND my travel journal pages along with a little reel.

Day 5: Chill Day in Busan

We bought a later train tickets back to Seoul so we could spend a little bit more time in Busan before spending the rest of our time in Seoul. We decided to take it easy that day. We had a pretty eventful first 3 days in South Korea and was craving a little slow down. We woke up, got ready, packed up and left our suitcases with the hotel to head out to our first stop: Jeonpo Cafe Street 전포카페거리. I wanted to get to a cafe but we ended up lining up for this pizza place that was recommended by my tattoo artist Saki! It was a good recommendation because the “waiting room” was packed with people before it even opened. The name of the pizza place is Lee Jae Mo Pizza 이재모피자. We didn’t hold back ordering a few things that looked good on the menu! We had cheese and sausage crust pizza and their seafood rice. Both were quite delicious.

As if the food wasn’t already filling, we went to a cute little cafe to get some jiggly pancakes and latte before shopping for… can you guess? more stationery! The stationeries in Korea are so adorable. They are cheaper with such great printing quality. I had a great time browsing Object 오브젝트 서면점 in Busan and bought quite a bit to journal with!

After exploring the street we decided to walk over to Lotte Department store to check out what malls are like in Korea. It was packed with a lot of mall stuff and fancy clothing store which were never my jam. Luckily we found a spot we could sit down and hang out for a bit before heading to the train station to go back to Seoul. That concludes our time in Busan, it was really lovely and memorable.

Day 6: Back in Seoul

Today is all about city explorations. We saw Dongdaemun Design Plaza in a few of youtube vlogs we watched in preparation for this trip. After free breakfast at the hotel, we walked over to Dongdaemun Design Plaza. It is a really neofuturistic looking building/structure. It hosts a few restaurants, connected to the subway station and a free to entry multilevel museums to explore. We arrived quite early so there were practically no one there yet. I am really happy with the fact that we got to explore these places just the two of us for a bit.

After DDP, we searched around for a lunch spot. We settled on a conveyor belt sushi spot inside a shopping complex. I didn’t jot down the name unfortunately but food was pretty good. We had a few things in our list to check out so we immediately head out to the first spot which was ARKO ART CENTER. Unfortunately they are closed for the season while they prepare for a new exhibition. I love how government ran museums in Seoul are actually free to enter. We walked around the Art Center and found a couple stationery stores: 10x10 and Artbox. Artbox is actually quite famous and they have so many branches all around Seoul. After picking up some more stationery we sat down at this cute cafe with a giant MIFFY statue outside. I enjoyed a cup of coffee while we rest our feet. We are not done with walking quite yet!

Next stops: Naksan낙산 Park, Seoul City Walk Trail and Ihwa Mural Village

I like to cluster areas where we explore in new cities. We walked up to the top of Naksan Park from Arko Art Center to walk all the way down Seoul City Walk trail which is a part of Naksan Park. We get to see the view of the city from the top and walk all the way down to explore a little bit of Ihwa Mural Village. It was a warmer day and a bit of a hike up. I was wearing a thick sweater over my t-shirt and had to take the sweater off for a bit! It was also quite smokey that day so we didn’t get the best view of the city but it was still really pretty walking all the way down.

We made it all the way down and looked for a spot to sit and hang out before we go to dinner! Juanpa found a Nepalese restaurant that he researched on reddit and had people raving about it. So we waited at a cafe chain in one of the shopping malls. We waited until we got quite hungry before walking over to Everest Seoul in Dongdaemun area. Y’all, the hype was true, food was sooooo good at this place. Juanpa said “I’m in heaven.” When the food arrived. I’ll just share some pictures below.

After eating more than we can eat, we finally called it a night and walked back to our hotel. It is so nice to be able to feel safe walking around at night. The city looked really beautiful that night and we had yet another great day in Seoul. See more of my travel journal and reel here.

Day 7: LOTTE WORLD 롯데월드

Today is a theme park and Lotte Tower exploration day. Lotte World consists of the largest indoor theme park and an outdoor theme park called Magic Island. We loaded up on breakfast before heading over to spend our time in and around Lotte World area. We took a train from our hotel to arrive directly infront of the Lotte World. The entrance was a little hard to find but when we found it we were ready to go. We got ourselves “magic passes” to cut down on waiting in line and it was SO WORTH IT. They also have a rental spot for people to dress in a school uniform. We didn’t do that because we are just too old for it (ha ha ha). What we did was get our caricatures done because the style of illustration looked so cute.

we got in before the line got really long!

Lotte world was FUN but most of the rides in the theme park was more for kids than adults so we did what we wanted to do and left to explore Lotte Tower. It was good because we wanted to check out this tall tower we kept seeing from across the theme park. We got to Lotte Tower and honestly I was a bit disappointed at first. There were so many brand names stores like Prada, Gucci, Valentino and what have you. (A lot of eye rolling as I write this) I am not the enjoyer of “luxury goods”, to a point where I feel like I could roll my eyes out of my eye sockets. Let’s move onto the good part of Lotte Tower which was their AQUARIUM! We had bought a combo ticket that allows us entry to Theme Park and Aquarium and it was so worth it. I think we got the tickets from Klook but I can’t find the combo deal to link here. 😔

Before the Aquarium, we ended up hanging out in the basement/ground floor level of Lotte Tower. It was cute and had a few independent non-luxury (here comes another eye roll) shops that are just so much more interesting to look at. There was also a cafe that was pretty unique: Tongue. We ordered a couple dessert and drinks. The way they displayed their baked goods and the decor is quite interesting.

The Aquarium was deceptively large and I didn’t have good clear pictures of the Beluga whale but had a cute little video of her looking at little children in this reel I made for the day. If you think this day is over, it’s not. We decided to check out Seoul Sky, where we could see the entire Seoul from 123 floors above. The Seoul Sky Observatory is located at the top of the Lotte World Tower, the world's fifth tallest building standing 123 stories and 555 meters high and it is the tallest building in South Korea.
It was wild to spot Lotte World Theme Park from the observatory looking so small. After the Observatory, I felt a little cooped up being indoors for hours. We walked outside and the feel of fresh night air felt so good. We found a ramen shop a little walk away from the tower. Before we head there though, I met a little puppy running around the grass right outside of the Lotte Tower. I got to say hi to the puppy and it made me miss Jasper a lot. Anyway, we walked over to Menya Hanabi for some much needed savory noodley goodness. It was DELICIOUS.

With these last few pictures, I’m going to conclude the first part of our South Korea Trip. I am hoping to finish Part II in the next week or so.

Until next time. xoxo!

Seoul서울 & Busan부산 2023 (part I)