September 25, 2024
I traveled to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, with my partner.
For transportation from the airport to central Seoul, we chose an airport limousine bus. It turned out to be a mistake. The bus moved smoothly on the highway, but as soon as we entered the city center, we got stuck in traffic. We arrived about 90 minutes later than scheduled.
We stayed at INN-The City MyeongDong, near Chungmuro Station. The hotel is in the same building as Sollago Myeongdong Hotel Residence. I liked the fact that both the room and the bathroom were new and clean.
After leaving our luggage at the hotel, we went to the nearby banapresso.
We bought some drinks and went upstairs to the second-floor seating area. A group of elderly Korean men and women were enjoying a conversation there. They asked us to take a group photo for them, so I was happy to help. After taking the photo, they gave me some coffee candy as a thank-you.
One of the elderly men who gave me the candy spoke to me in Japanese and asked, “Where are you from? How old are you?” I replied, “Your Japanese is very good,” and we talked for a little while.
I don’t know when he learned Japanese or whether his experience of learning to speak Japanese was a happy one, so I didn’t ask about it. He told me that he was 87 years old, but he was very energetic. He stood perfectly straight and had a lively voice.
We left the café and walked around Myeongdong. It was incredibly crowded.
We went to Myeongdong Kyoja, which had been featured in the Michelin Guide. We ordered kalguksu and mandu for 23,000 KRW. They were good, but not quite amazing.
As we were leaving, some Japanese tourists who had been eating there said, “The kimchi was really good!” We completely agreed. The kimchi was delicious.
Myeongdong Cathedral was within walking distance, so we went to see it.
It was quite a hot day. We sat on a bench inside the cathedral for a while, but we couldn’t stand the heat and soon decided to leave.
When we returned to central Myeongdong, fighter jets were flying overhead, their engines roaring as they cut across the blue sky. The sound of the jets doing loops while leaving trails of clouds behind them was incredibly loud. My partner was getting fed up and said, “I just want to go somewhere quiet… There are so many people… It’s so noisy…”
Before coming to Korea, I had purchased a WOWPASS, so we stopped by Lotte Department Store. At a kiosk, I loaded 10,000 yen onto the WOWPASS and withdrew 50,000 KRW in cash.
The WOWPASS is a prepaid card that allows you to load money in Japanese yen and pay in KRW. You can also withdraw your KRW balance from a kiosk. However, in my experience, most places that accepted WOWPASS also accepted credit cards, so I didn’t feel that I really needed it. The WOWPASS also has a transportation IC card function through Tmoney, but I thought that I could simply buy a Tmoney card separately at a station.
At EDIYA COFFEE in Myeongdong, we had iced coffee and tomato juice for a total of 8,100 KRW. Seoul was hot, but there were plenty of cafés, so it was easy to stop somewhere for a break. That was very helpful.
While walking around Myeongdong, a man asked me, “Do you want to buy fakes?” I replied, “I don’t buy counterfeit goods.” He then asked, “What about women?” I answered, “I don’t buy them either,” and walked away.
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner at a dwaeji galbi restaurant called Ttungbo Dwaeji Galbi Ttonggogi, which had a high rating on Google Maps.
Neither Japanese nor English was understood at all, but we managed to place our order using gestures. The food was delicious, and we were very satisfied. Two servings and one bottle of makgeolli cost 39,000 KRW.
Later, I asked a friend who knows a lot about Korea, and they told me that Google Maps is not particularly popular in Korea and that using Korean map apps such as NAVER Map is considered the norm.
Before going back to our room, we bought some ice cream at the convenience store on the first floor of the hotel. I got the impression that Oreo was extremely popular in Korea.
