February 1: This was our first of two full days in Korea, and I wanted to make the most of it and eat at as many spots as I could! I actually switched my Day 1 and Day 2, because I figured Day 1 was a little closer, a tad more chill as our first post-travel day, and it coincidentally had a bunch of soups on this day. According to the weather app, it would be colder on this day than the next, so I thought it was fitting.
Our first stop of the day was at Seungsu Baking Studio, a small bakery with gorgeous looking breads. Korea has a huge bakery and cafe culture, and I picked out this one in particular because I found it on YouTube from a vlogger. Now, that video showcased their baguettes, and I kind of wish I got one, but instead, I really wanted a croissant since they’re everywhere. I ended up getting a pain au chocolat (aka a chocolate croissant), and a chocolate scone, which I saved to eat later. The croissant was amazingly crispy and flaky!
Speaking of cafe culture, I wanted to stop by a cafe at some point, and I found a The Liter in the area. I also found The Liter on YouTube, but in this case, from one of the many ASMR Korean Cafe vlogs. It’s supposed to be known for their huge sizes, and my boyfriend and I both got mediums as opposed to large because the drinks were just that big. I got a green grape ade, and he got a mango yogurt smoothie. Honestly though, there were cafes and coffee shops everywhere that sell mostly the same stuff. Plus, I’m not sure about other locations, but this one was a hole-in-the-wall type place, and had no inside seating, just a counter to order drinks at. My boyfriend said it wasn’t a real cafe at that point. (I forgot to take a picture of my drink, oops)
For lunch(? It was like 11 at this point), I had picked out a Gamjatang (spicy pork neck soup) place literally down the street. A common theme of this trip is that at this point, we weren’t that hungry, plus we just bought our drinks. so we wandered around the area for a bit to finish our massive medium-sized drinks, and digest a bit before eating. The place I picked was 24 hours, so we didn’t have to worry about opening time, and when we finally went in, there was no line and plenty of seating.When we left however, there was a massive line (it was noon though, so peak lunch time), so I’m glad we went in when we did!
Next up on the docket was checking out Baskin Robbins, but not just any Baskin Robbins, Baskin Robbins Brown, which supposedly boasts 100 flavors and is like an upgraded version of Baskin Robbins. There’s quite a few locations around Korea, and I’ve seen a few in my area in Japan, but I’m not sure if the Brown-type experience exists anywhere else. The flavors that were available that day looked pretty unique, and we shared a 10-flavor sampler among the ones that were in that day. The ones we got were: mint chocolate chip, green tea, pear sorbet, strawberry cheesecake, ghiradelli chocolate, mango, strawberry yogurt, yakult sorbet, shooting star, and apple mint. My favorite has to be the pear sorbet; it was so good and smooth and such an amazing flavor.
After that, we headed up the street to Knotted Donuts, a proper cafe this time, of which their menu highlight was their donuts. I forget where I found this one, but probably from another YouTube vlogger. My boyfriend ordered their mint chocolate donut and their seasonal black sesame cream milk tea, and I got the basic milk cream donut and an iced apple chamomile tea.
When we finished eating, drinking, and chilling at the cafe, I saw on the map that the area behind us was labled a cafe street, so we walked along it until we got to K-Star road, which was also labled on the map as a tourist attraction for kpop. I guess there’s just a bunch of cafes in the area, but that was about it. We had some digesting to do and some time to kill, so we walked along the K-Star road and taking in the scenery, but again, not too much to see. It was essentially an entire street lined with individual shops of luxury and high-end brands. There were some colorful bear statues across the street, and I saw a few buildings labled with famous kpop management companies’ names, but I didn’t think it was too special there either.
We also ended up walking all the way to COEX mall, which was my main tourist-y spot of the day. I mostly wanted to see the coex library, which I had previously heard of and seen in video as a must-go insta spot (I don’t have Instagram though). The library was pretty cool looking, but for whatever reason was smaller than what I had previously imagined. Other than that, we walked around the mall, window shopped the bookstore, browsed the shop selection they had, and even walked into the Starbucks Reserve there, which was kind of small. There was a surprisingly large amount of foreign food and American chains in the mall. My boyfriend was interested in checking out the in-mall aquarium, but when we got there, we felt the tickets were too expensive.
After realxing from walking all day a bit, we decided to head back to our Airbnb area for an early dinner. My original plan was to grab food at a buddaejjigae place I found on Google Maps because my boyfriend is into it, but he knew I’m not so much, and said he was ok with just going with another soup place I wanted to go to later. Along the way, we walked through the small traditional market in Gangnam, Yeondong tratitional market, and arrived at a 24 hour soup place called Tang Tang Jib. I really wanted Galbitang, and we also ordered a Galbijjim. It was pretty different than the one he’s used to in the Bay Area, but I suppose that the one he likes is a more modern rendition, and also just assumed different places have their own way to doing things.
We were pretty full after dinner, so we went back to our Airbnb to chill. We actually passed a Sundubu place on the way, right across from the last restaurant, and my boyfriend was interested in getting some later, since I didn’t put any sundubu places into the schedule (because there’s some places you can get it in Japan, and I’m not into sundubu). In the meantime, I was deciding on what to get for dessert, as originally my plan was to go get boba, specifically try Palgong, but the place that I found closest to us on Google Maps didn’t exist on Naver. When it comes to Korea, I honestly trust the stuff on Naver more, so I decided not to risk it and just go with a place I know exists. Unfortunately, other than Gong Cha, there wasn’t much I could find around, so we ended up going back to the Sundubu place, and walking to a Sulbing for a late-night bingsu for dessert.
February 2: My plans for the day kind of got set back, as the night before my boyfriend noticed the heater in our Airbnb stopped working, so the host was going to send an engineer over at 10am the next day. We thought that meant we had to stay in the place, so we were waiting for the person to come. In the meantime, since I woke up early and didn’t have much to do, I briefly went out on a morning walk because there was a kkwabaegi (Korean donut) place in the area I wanted to try. I ended up getting one, plus a Korean-style corn dog for my boyfriend. They were both really good, and I especially liked how pillowy the donut was. (Apologies for the scuffed picture.)
My first spot for the day was Namdaemun market, which was one of the many markets I researched for shopping and street food. First we stopped by Gamekol Son Wangmandu, and I originally wanted a meat bun from them, but their other selection was dwindling, and I accidentally bought a red bean bun. It was still pretty good, and I loved the bun texture, but I was really in the mood for a meat bun at the time. I’m not sure if we were just in the wrong part of the market, but it seemed more of shopping market with some smal eateries around rather than more street food. We ended up just walking around and browsing, and I also bought a meat mandu from Hyojason Wangmandu, which I found on the way. That one was pretty good and the filling was interesting. After we were kind of done with walking around, we decided to walk to BBQ chicken, another Korean Fried Chicken place. Along the way, I found a hotteok stand, and I immediately wanted one. After waiting a bit in line, I chose to get a red bean one, and it was amazing. I especially loved how crispy and flaky the crust was. Hotteok was one of things I really wanted to get so I’m glad this one was so good.
BBQ Chicken was actually going to be my dinner spot for the day, but because we were nearing peak lunch time, I thought my planned lunch spot would be crowded, especially because that place has a reputation for having long lines. Anyway, when we arrived, the place was empty, and we sat down immediately. I knew I wanted to get their olive oil fried one, and the employee recommended a half and half with their sweet yangnyeom chicken, so we went with that. It was super crispy, and I loved the crunch and flakiness. I have zero spice tolerance, their sweet yangyeom sauce that the employee said wasn’t spicy was still spicy for me.
After that we walked around that area for a bit, and then went to go explore the main Lotte Department store just a few minutes away. I had heard Lotte stores are also a good place to go shopping, but this one was just filled with luxury brand shops with a food court on the top floors. Nothing realistically interested me, and I was wondering if I really went to the right one.
We had plenty of time left in the day, and even though my next stop was quite a bit away walking, we decided to just walk to Palgong Tea. I chose a location that was near Bukchon Hanok Village, which was my next touristy spot for the day. We could skip the language barrier and order on an iPad, and we chose to eat-in the small cafe to give our legs some time to rest. Read about my boba here! For the quality of the drink, it was a really good deal. As expected of Korean cafe culture.
My boyfriend needed to use the bathroom, and Palgong didn’t have one. Just up the road was Osulloc Tea House, which sells tea and specializes in green tea, has a cafe, and a bar. It was also on my list of places to go, and I figured that they most likely had a bathroom. If need be, I was willing to buy something as a souvenir for myself anyway if we needed an excuse to use their restroom. We went up to the second floor looking for a bathroom, and my boyfriend said he wouldn’t mind trying something from their cafe, so we ended up ordering a slice of roll cake and a hot matcha latte. I also decided not to get anything else from the store.
So I also ended up using the restroom, and my first impression was that it was super fancy, like the rest of the vibe of the Tea House. I entered a vacant restroom (which is a private restroom, with a sink and a stall with a toilet for some reason, why is there a stall inside when the outside already locks and the stall can’t lock?), but just as I walked in and admired the place, a middle-aged lady came out of the toilet stall. I was surprised to see her, because obviously the outside said the room was vacant, and I looked at her, and she just looked at me with a “What are you looking at me for?” expression on her face, and then I thought maybe I’m the crazy one and the toilet stall actually locks. I went in, and it didn’t, and I couldn’t lock the door because the other lady had to leave. And it just happened to be my luck that another lady walks in while I’m on the toilet, opens my stall door a bit, and all I could do was stutter sounds to signal someone was in there. She made some apology sounds, left in a hurry, and let me be. That initial lady really screwed me over…
Anyway, after we finished our green tea snacks we walked around the area and went to take pictures at the super touristy picture spot for Bukchon Hanok Village. There were not too many tourists, but still a good amount of people, and quite a few girls taking pictures and wearing hanbok. We also took some pictures at the top of our hike.
It was around 4 at that point, and my next stop on our schedule was to go back to Myeongdong Gyoja. I wanted to somewhat earlier, or at an odd time to avoid any meal-time rush crowds, and my boyfriend didn’t mind walking, so we walked all the way back to the Myeongdong area. We ended up going to the branch restaurant, which is down the street from the main restaurant, to potentially avoid any lines at the main store. When we got there, there was actually no line, and although the inside was pretty busy, there were still some empty tables. They’re pretty smart by using a vending machine to pay for the items you want, and since they only have 4 items on their menu, it’s pretty efficient. We got their famous kalguksu and mandu.
After we were full from eating, we walked around the area, and took a look at all the stalls that were set up for the Myeongdong Night Market. I heard this market was more street-food-y, and there was a variety of food stalls set up, along with some souvenir shopping. I really wanted to get some street food on this trip, but since we were so full, we didn’t end up getting anything. I think what I really wanted to experience was a street food hall like Gwangjang market, which I couldn’t go to this time around, so I will definitely have to stop by the next time I go. We ended our day by walking along the Myeongdong underground shopping area, but nothing really appealed to be, so we headed back to the Airbnb empty-handed.
February 3: Our flight was at noon, and since I woke up early, I wanted to get some fishcake from the 24 hour tteokbokggi stand around the corner. My failed attempts at Korean was embarassing, but I eventually walked away with a fried seaweed roll, a fried dumpling, a fried veggie thing, and two sticks of fishcake. We also finished up the leftover fried chicken we had from the previous two days as breakfast.
We got on the 9 o’clock airport bus, arrived around 10, and since neither of us were very hungry, we just went straight in to security after checking in. I did get a Jeju green tea ice blended drink from the Coffee Bean at the airport though. After seeing more Coffee Beans in Korea than I have in my entire life in America, I had to get something to end the trip.
And that’s the end of my first trip to Korea! Overall it was fun, and we ate a lot of good food. I wish it were longer (so I can eat more…), but I really did not like not being able to understand anything and no communicate.
Part 1 was here.
Japan Excursions 
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