Seoul 2019, Day 1
Crazy deep-fried spiraled potato and hot dog skewer from a food cart in Myeongdong. Ignore my double chin please…
It’s been almost a year since our trip to Korea and Japan, and we haven’t really written much about it, or about any of our recent trips. Now that I am spending more time at home, I figure I might as well start working on this backlog, and I wanted to start with the most recent one, mainly because there’s a larger chance of me remembering what actually happened during our time there. I will try to write as accurately as possible, but there’s only so much I can extrapolate from a photo, and really, you wouldn’t know if I was making something up anyway.
This trip started out as an adventure for both of us. Nick headed to India a week earlier for work, and then later had another work trip to Thailand. We figured that since he’s already over there, we might as well make a vacation out of it, so the plan was for us to fly from our respective places and meet up at the airport in Seoul. I had never flown internationally by myself, so that was exciting for me. We got lucky with the timing of our flights. I would arrive first, and I’d only have to wait about 90 minutes for Nick to arrive on his flight from Thailand, and then we could both take the shuttle to our hotel in Seoul, which is actually quite far from the airport (like 90 minutes our so).
After the short time in immigration and customs, I made it to the arrivals hall to wait for Nick, and enjoyed the airport’s attempt to make it more visually appealing than most other airports:
I spent the entire time waiting for Nick in an area in front of this mini-garden; it could have been worse. Nick arrived as scheduled and then we made our way to the bus shuttles, and immediately discovered that there was an entire basement with waaaaaay more interesting shops and restaurants than where I was waiting. I blame the long travel time and jet-lag for not making the effort to walk around the airport some more.
Our shuttle made various stops in the heart of Seoul at different hotels, so we got a quick glimpse of the places that we weren’t staying at, such as the Le Meridien, which had a cool light sculpture outside the lobby:
We eventually made it to the stop for the Park Hyatt, but the shuttle actually stopped at a nearby hotel, so we had to walk there. We could see the hotel from where we were:
Image Source: Agoda
This immediately brought up memories of our first trip to Tokyo over a decade ago, where we walked out of the Shinjuku train station to see the Park Hyatt Tokyo towering above, and then spending an hour wandering the streets of Shinjuku with our luggage trying to find a way into the building that the hotel was on top of. Like, it was a five minute walk from the station, but we could not find the main entrance; it was awful. We eventually found some rarely used back entrance, and as we walked around trying to find the elevator, a confused looking security guard approached us asking what we were doing. I don’t think he expected to see hotel guests at midnight, but he was helpful and showed us to the elevator.
Our experience this time in Seoul was less traumatic, as all we had to do was cross the street. Less interesting of a story, but much better for our emotional well-being.
After checking-in to our hotel, it was about 8pm, and we needed to eat something, so we checked out the Starfield Coex Mall that we could see across the street. As it turns out, this mall is gigantic at 154,000 square meters, which is roughly the size of 77 football fields. This takes mall walking to a completely different level.
Inside, we discovered the amazing Starfield Library:
Image Source: Tripadvisor
We didn’t expect there to be a massive library in the middle of the mall, but it was cool to randomly walk through it. I also love the Engrish that you sometimes encounter:
Like, what exactly is the 8 seconds referring to? The length of time it’ll take you to buy something? How long your shirt will last? How long you’ll be in the store before you leave? So many questions…
After walking through 1/3 of the mall, it was about closing time, so we headed back to the hotel to rest up for our big trip the next day: The DMZ.