after finding out that the pyeongchang olympic venues were already being disassembled, i decided to stay in seoul for one more day and a do a little agenda free shopping and browsing in a couple of the districts i’d missed.
i also had to correct a mistake made with my train ticket to busan. i’d purchased it online earlier in the month and, while checking out various travel options, i must have reset the travel date to the purchase date. oops. in any case, i was fortunate to double check my ticket this am and realize i would have been disappointed showing up with a ticket voucher for march 9 on march 28th. unfortunately, there was nothing they could do for me so i just had to chalk up the $50 to a traveler’s mistake.
my first stop was garosugil, a cute shopping area in gangnam’s sinsa-dong. i found this blog a little too late in this trip, but if you’re ever in seoul for shopping and food, my seoul searching looking like a great one to check out. anyhow… first impressions getting out of the subway at sinsa: it’s surrounded by plastic surgery offices and there are girls everywhere you look with suspicious patches on their faces (those sunglasses are not covering that gauze, honey). pushing past that, garosugil has some of the more mainstream stores (apple, columbia, etc) but there are cute jewelry, clothing and floral shops nestled in between. jin tae was able to join me for a farewell lunch and some make-up shopping, his favorite, i think. thanks for hanging out and solving world crisis’ with me, friend! i hope it’s not another twenty years!
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after hearing that i wanted to check out one of the newer lotte malls, jin insisted on dropping me at the new lotte shopping mall, lotte world tower. added next to one of the “old” lotte malls and lotte world, lotte world tower is now the tallest building in seoul and is home to everything from the best restaurants to a cinema to a beluga whale. an elevator takes you up to the top for around $20 and, on a clear day, is probably the most amazing way to see the whole city. they were very upfront about the air quality when i bought my ticket (5 km visibility range) but since this was my last day, i decided to see what i could see! the ride up to the top is amazing, with a fast history of seoul and the construction of the tower projected onto the walls and ceiling. the views at the top were, as expected, pretty limited, but you could certainly see how amazing it would be on a clear day. glass panels let you stand “over the edge” of the tower and an outside observation deck lets you get an even better idea as to how tall this building is. i should note that there were hardly any people there when i was! in fact, i walked through room after empty room where you can tell there are usually massive queues to get to the elevator. it took just minutes for me to get to the top from getting a ticket, but you might want to give yourself more (a lot more!) time on a clear/normal day.
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from the lotte tower i was able to see the olympic plaza and thought, since i’d missed pyeongchang, maybe i should see the ’88 olympics up close. an error on my part led me to the olympic baseball stadium (which was gearing up for a baseball game) and it took me awhile – and a ridiculously crowded rush hour bus ride – to figure out that what i’d been looking at was in the world peace gate a couple miles away. The plaza was beautiful with a temporary sculpture for pyeongchang, the gate, the eternal flame and flags of all nations rimming the far end. after hearing so much about the million dollar olympic venues falling into disrepair, it was fun to see the buildings from the seoul olympics, still in the heart of the city, still very much in use and still representing the spirit of the games.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”20″ gal_title=”seoul day four : olympic park | jamsil”]
my final destination for my shopping day was lotte young. it’s a newer member of the lotte family, filled with pop-up shops that – i’d read – hosted emerging designers. definitely not quite what i had imagined, the mall is certainly fun for anyone in their teens – twenties. the brands geared towards younger customers in design and price, it was fun to see but not the bastion of indie designers i’d been hoping for.
luckily, my way home included a walk through myeongdong, which felt a little more fun this time around (or maybe i was just less tired). i was starving so i grabbed some kimchi dumplings for dinner and ran into one of my favorite treats ever, ichigo daifuku (japanese – i have no idea what it’s called in korean). a strawberry is wrapped in sweet red bean paste and pink mochi. this is a seasonal treat and impossible to find in the states (trust me, i’ve looked) but adding to how good this was was the strawberry itself – it was roughly the size of an apricot! i’m so sad i didn’t get a photo of the entire stand because they had these massive berries all set up and it was beautiful! my final battery charge for the day was spent taking a video of a man making dragon’s hair candy. i’m taking it home as a gift (shhhh!) so we’ll have to wait to see how it tastes but honey and chocolate? i’m thinking you can’t go wrong!
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i got a little nostalgic coming out of the subway station. tomorrow i can walk directly over to the ktx station without going into the subway, so that was my last ride on the number four line, my last time coming out of the number ten exit and walking up the hill to what feels like home. there are so many places to explore in the world, but when you find some place like this, it’s hard not to imagine not coming back at the next opportunity.
until next time, seoul. 사랑해요!