Hey Hive!
So if you missed the last few posts, I've been sharing about our first trip to Seoul back in Nov 2022! We were waiting post-covid for everyone to go on their holidays before taking a big one and we finally decided to go on our honeymoon! It's also our first time experiencing Fall so we were double excited!
Last week, we started our day by going to a very fancy cafe which was unfortunately way too fancy for us since we're not coffee drinkers. We ended up getting a very bitter shot of coffee that was way too concentrated for us.
After that we went to check out the biggest mall in Seoul - coex which is located in Gangnam where they had this huge sculpture dedicated to Gangnam Style.
The mall is super huge since it's combined with an exhibition hall and they also had this huge library in the middle of all the shops which was really cool!
We had some better food for brunch which was a relief after that crappy shot of coffee. This big rosti was probably one of the more interesting dishes we had.
There's still more for this day so let's continue!
12 Nov 2022. Saturday.
After we ate that delicious meal we went to walk around window shopping to digest and came across some interesting shops. There was this one that was selling some household and lifestyle goods that looked really comfortable.
The shop's name was Butter and the tagline was Better Life, Better Butter so initially I thought it was going to be baked goods but they didn't really have pastries there at all. I kinda felt cheated ngl.
They did have lots of nice Christmas ornaments and decorations though, since it was nearing the Christmas period.
I think that was the first time I've seen a pink Christmas tree.
But yes what a scam for a shop called Butter.
There were some cute phone cases in this shop selling phone accessories.
I actually like this design a lot. It's simple and has pastel colours that would totally work as coasters. But I don't think they were coasters. What a shame, it was so cute too.
We went to see this clothes shop that looked pretty huge from the entrance. The shop name was Åland which reminded us of when we were in Finland.
The shop seemed even more huge on the inside and there were so many clothes.
They also had these very cute sweaters with dogs on it that caught my eye. Although I'm not sure why they named it Maltese Crew when half of them weren't actually Maltese dogs.
They also had these mugs with simple cat illustrations on them.
There was also a dog design and the same ones on notebooks. I think this design would've been better for the sweaters instead of those fake Maltese dogs.
They also had them on folders and I would've totally bought it if I still used folders.
Most of the mall looked pretty simple but these walkways seemed to go on for miles because the mall was so big.
There was also the Aquarium which I think is the biggest attraction in the mall. But after visiting a few different aquariums and reading about the news with some others we decided to boycott aquariums now. It also looked really crowded at the time so we decided to pass on it.
Granted, the news we read was about the aquarium in Japan where the fish got frozen and those with dolphin shows where they mistreat the animals so it wasn't this particular aquarium. We did seriously consider it since we were already here.
Ultimately, we decided not to because of the crowd. Although that might've been our downfall because it started raining.
There was an outdoor section of the mall with some shops and restaurants and for some reason there was a huge horse statue as well.
We went to the other side of the mall to see what else there was.
We came across an exhibition for a manga app that looked pretty fancy.
I remember seeing some sponsored posts for this app and story on my social media but I can't remember the name of it.
For the life of me I can't remember the name now but I recall seeing these exact characters on the ads, and apparently it was a spicy love story or something.
We soon got tired of walking so we took a break at Jamba Juice since I wanted a healthy drink.
We sat there for a while and I think we might've dozed off a bit since we were tired. We basically took a power nap and drank some berry juice there.
It looked like the rain had let up so we decided to leave the mall and go visit the bukchon hanok village, which is home to hundreds of traditional houses that date back to the Joseon dynasty. It's the only neighbourhood in Seoul where they have such houses with people still living there.
Unfortunately, on the way there the rain started getting even heavier and just a little after we arrived it was almost a storm.
You can't tell from the picture but it started raining very heavily after and we were practically soaked. The worst part was there wasn't anywhere with shelter we could find a cab and no one was willing to pick us up there.
We ended up having to walk in the rain without umbrellas all the way back to the station.
There was an underground mall there with lots of shops.
And it eventually led to an actual mall so we went to check it out.
This mall looked pretty hip and they had some retro stuff like this Chupa Chups inspired outfit.
I guess this mall was called Doota and they had quite a few floors with mostly fashion retail shops.
We needed a place to sit after walking in the rain so we headed to the food court.
It was a really spacious and modern, industrial-looking food court with plenty of seats and stalls.
We weren't super hungry yet so we decided to try this Gelato Croffle shop.
Here's the menu featuring many different types of croffles with various toppings.
Of course there were different flavours of gelato as well.
We also wanted something warm so we headed to Auntie Anne's Pretzels to see if they had our favourite pepperoni pretzels since we can't find them anywhere anymore.
Unfortunately we couldn't find it here as well, so we settled for some simple pretzel sticks.
And this was the croffle with Riso gelato. We weren't sure what riso was, but found out it was rice pudding so we decided to try it and it was surprisingly light and just slightly sweet so it paired pretty well.
After a break, we went to check out more shops like this hobby one with plenty of figurines.
We briefly took a look at one of the many fashion floors and saw lots of girly outfits.
Then we found the No Brand supermarket which had plenty of snacks so we bought some to try. No Brand is actually a Korean brand and the only thing we know about it is their cookies which are one of my favourites. So it was a surprise to see a whole supermarket!
After that we were pretty much done so we took the train back to our hotel and it was still raining.
The way to our hotel from the train station is unsheltered, sadly so we ended up drenched yet again. Sean braved the rain to buy us dinner from the Gimbap place we came across the other day and after a nice warm shower we enjoyed our dinner of fried rice, bibimbap and gimbap in our hotel.
We really regretted leaving Gangnam since it was such a bummer being caught in the rain. Our shoes and pants were completely soaked after that and it was a real hassle drying them. Thankfully the hotel had a laundry room but seems like a lot of people were caught in the rain too so we had to wait to use it. This was just an unlucky day, but we learned to always check the weather from now on.
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #243 (Seoul): Luxury Coffee and Gangnam Snacks🕺