today is a day i wrote a lot of email for. the only two activities i had pre-planned for this trip were a bike ride and a facial – my favorite one-two punch.
i read on a site that seoul – and korea in general – has poured a ton of money into their bike transportation resources, both to cut down on traffic in the city and to encourage recreation and tourism in the outlying areas. i figured i should probably take advantage of that and so i started writing email! a lot of email!
it’s hard to find info in english on riding in seoul and even more difficult to find a bike that’s not just a cruiser. i reached out to luc from seoul cycle and he was ridiculously generous with information and contact info for possible rentals – even offering to meet me for a ride and show me around. a couple of our initial rental contacts fell through and we (luc helping me this whole time) ended up connecting with phil from sps cycles/gentleman’s cycling club. phil is a distributor of fara bikes (i had a medium road d1 – it was ridiculously smooth) and typically only does longer term executive rentals. he had pity on me though and completely hooked me up, picking me up at the station and shuttling me to his shop (thanks, phil!). both of these guys put up with an endless stream of email and questions from me and i can’t thank them enough. if either of you are ever in the pnw, i owe you dinner & a ride!
over the weekend i noticed quite a few folks on bikes – dressed head to toe in all black and cruising around in packs on some pretty nice rides. phil had offered to drop the bike off at my vrbo and it seemed easy enough to hop on the subway with your bike, hop off where you wanted to ride and head home the same way. i was in – until i found out that bikes are only allowed on the subway over the weekend (which makes sense given weekday subway traffic). i nervously planned a route from seoul station to the han river, which has a dedicated bike path, on kakao (great “bike” option, no english in ios though). then phil offered to meet me at his shop in cheonho, which is an up and coming bike retail district only two blocks and two coffee shops off the han river path! perfect! i’ve never been so happy to look like a dork in lycra in public as taking the subway to cheonho and not having to figure out how to ride in eight lanes of traffic.
final notes on my ride and the han river trail: the worst air quality of the trip – it still felt amazing to stretch my legs after two days of pounding pavement, but you can see the haze in the pictures; the dedicated han bike path is amazing – generally flat so it’s fun and fast with a few minor ups and downs; there are workout stations, convenience stores, bathrooms and water fountains on the path every couple of miles, so no need to pack a ton of food/water; if you’re here at the right time of year, do not miss the banpo bridge water fountain display – i’m missing it by just a couple of days but saw it my first time here and it’s amazing; finally, now that i’m here i’ve seen a few shops with nicer rentals (ex: the giant/liv concept store in hapjeoung) but phil is right: most locals own and few folks are here (yet) to ride much more than the cruisers you can rent along the waterfront.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”5″ gal_title=”Biking the Han River”]
i finished riding at two, bought phil a thank you espresso and raced to the subway at 2:30 with two hours to get back to seoul station, shower and head to myeongdong for my facial at shangpree! i think i came out of the subway next to the spa with about ten minutes to spare. totally totally worth the rush! amazing service, an amazing facial and honestly, don’t even get me started on the air leg massage – the beyond perfect solution to two days of pavement & hiking and a 3 hr road ride.
you’re not meant to go out after a facial – all shiny (think vaseline) and glowy with no makeup – but it was only six pm and i still hadn’t decided whether i was going to stay in seoul or go to the olympic venues on my final day here, so i needed to carpe diem. the spa is just one stop from the myeongdong shopping district, so i went there first and endured a few odd looks to check out the scene there. definitely a district that has been talked up internationally, this was probably the most tourists i’d seen on the trip. i heard japanese, spanish, arabic being spoken and, while it was fun to check out all of the skin care stores, i grabbed a quick bite and kept going.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”9″ gal_title=”myeongdong”]
i hiked to the top of namsan yesterday but really wanted to revisit at night when it was all lit up. myeongdong is close to the tram that goes up to the top, so after some bad directions from google maps, i took the easy way up this time. at the top is namsan tower, which i hadn’t had time to do the day before and had figured it would be a great place to see the city lights. it turned out to be incredibly touristy (most of the tower top is taken up with a sweet shop and gift store) and the reflection from the bright lights inside on the windows made seeing out hard. in hindsight, the views from outside, below the tower, were much better – you could see the cars driving along the han, the many sections of the city below and even the seoul wall continuing off over the tops of the surrounding mountains.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”10″ gal_title=”namsan tower”]
tomorrow was supposed to be my olympic venue day, but i did some last minute checking tonight and it turns out they’re already deconstructing the venues. i thought there would be a lot more residual excitement from the olympics but the only olympics things i’ve seen are a couple of old signs remaining when i arrived at the airport and some subway tiles from the seoul summer games years ago. in any event, rather than spending a good chunk of the day on a train to watch some building be dismantled, i’m going to stick around here and finish up the remaining items on my list. namely: shopping!
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”11″ gal_title=”seoul day three”]
great pictures! so much color