Seoul Part 2

Back in Seoul after Jeju and Busan for the last leg of our holiday.

We changed our bnb and decided to try another which was just across the road from the station. Behind the apartment was a restaurant which served yummy budae jjigae! We really wanted to try this after looking at so many tempting videos on social media and this proved to be the right choice for 2 hungry people!

Korean Army Stew - budae jjigae! 2 thumbs up!

After lunch, we headed to Myeongdong in search of more food and potential gifts to buy back. Didn't find any gifts we liked but definitely found a lot of food! Snacked and walked so much that day. 

For dinner, we headed back to Bukchon Hanok Village in search of this famous ginseng chicken restaurant that we couldn't find the first time we went to Gyeongbokgong palace.

Ginseng chicken soup from Tosokchon. Baby Eeyore eyeing the tasty hot soup!

The next day, we weren't sure what we wanted to do so we decided to visit the Namsan tower! 

Trekked uphill to the Namsan Cable Car station. Was pretty fun I must say - got to work for what we want! 

Spent a lot of time here because we didn't have anywhere else we wanted to go. We queued to go up the tower with 2 little children in front of us. We just couldn't help but be amazed at how cute they looked in puffy winter clothes, never get to see this in Singapore!

View from the top!

At night, we were out of ideas of where to eat - mostly because all the places we opted for were either closed or had moved, so we picked this random western restaurant that had a decent number of eaters. (Singaporean mentality - got many people means good)

Seafood marinara from dunno-whats-this-place-called... I thought it was really delicious, was cooked perfectly al dente! 

After dinner, we had gongcha. Gongcha in Korea is probably more popular than in Singapore, they have huge seating areas in their cafés! Their drinks are not cheap though - twice the price of Singapore's. 

After chilling and using free wifi at the gongcha cafe, we met Kyung Eun and went for drinks. 

It was our last night in Korea and of course we couldn't miss out Chimaek - chicken and beer! I really wanted to do a My Love from Another Star scene where Cheon Songyi would order chimaek and chill at home but it was not to be. We still had the real deal at the bar itself! Tried some beer but I had two sips and that was it, too disgusted with the bitter taste to continue. We ordered a mix of spicy and original chicken. The spicy was a lot nicer - though I was suffering from my burning tongue. 

That was our last night in Seoul with Kyung Eun! Shared a cab back after because we talked so much and so late into the night that there was no more public transport operating anymore. 

The next day, we ended our last day in Seoul at Apgujeong with lots of snow fall with big snow flakes! Having snowball fights with Sam was pretty fun (and brutal because we both no give chance!). We were the only two kukus running around the streets without an umbrella, perspiring inside our thick layers and getting drenched outside once the snow melted. But it was a really fun way to end our stay in Korea, I wouldn't have exchanged that moment for anything else!

Can't believe that it's been 6 months since we left Korea! Miss the snow, skiing  and of course the food! Can't wait for our next trip, whenever that will be! 

Jeju Part 2

During our time in Jeju, we stayed at this inn called Breakfast at Tiffany's. The owner, Mr Chung, was very kind to help us plan what to do after finding out what we generally like to see and how much time we had in Jeju. 

For a start, he recommended this viewing point, 1km up Hallasan. As we drove higher, the scenery started to change and trees turned from green to white. It was beautiful, cold, but just what we liked. 

Once we reached the viewing point, we took a stroll on the boardwalk. Frozen streams, swamps, and trees branches were layered in snow - presenting a brilliant snowball-throwing opportunity for the bf where I was the unfortunate victim.

This was taken just after he threw one at me. It probably hit me while I was taking this shot. -.-

After Hallasan, we went to the Jeju stone park. I found out that we had to pay and we didn't want to so we walked to the carpark, climbed up a small wall and took this shot. This was only a small part of the stone park but this also affirmed our decision to not pay to go in.

According to the description, each of these stone structures represents past generals in the army. Not sure why there were so many of them though. Go google.

After the stone park, we made a visit to the Dongamburi crater. I think Iceland's volcanoes fascinated us (since we had 2 just behind school) so we wanted to see how a volcano in Korea would look like. (Sorry no volcano pic, the crater looked like a forest)

Since we already jammed packed our day with site visits, we decided to go for one more - the Seongsan sunrise hill.

It was a really nice peak to visit, especially since we climbed up when the sun was about to set. 

My handsome boy and me! ^^

What a view!

Descending

The next day, we decided to have seafood soup! This soup was sold everywhere in Jeju and this particular restaurant was generous with their abalones, clams and crabs too - that's half a small crab in the soup. I think this only cost us $15. How awesome!

Next, we visited the Teddy Bear Museum, the very place we failed to visit on our first day in Jeju. 

Mona Lisa

Goong

Einstein and Sam

Steve Jobs and I

Bf was hungry so he bought some dried tangerine snacks to try.

Then we visited this place called the Jusangjeolli cliff. I was fascinated by the geography of the rocks with columnar joints. Just thought it was pretty cool to have natural rock formations that could form cool shapes repeatedly - tessellations! (Ok I shall stop the lecture here)

Of course, we also visited one of the waterfalls - can't remember if it was Cheonjeyeon or Cheonjiyeon, both sounded the same. It was too dark and there were no visitors left so we didn't spend a lot of time there. 

During our stay in Jeju, we got to experience teenie weenie drops of snow at our bnb resort and heard a woodpecker at his job on our last day too! The owner of our bnb brought in superb orange juice and even made their own jam. We just had to buy some back! All in all, we really enjoyed our stay in Jeju! Will share the last leg of our Korea trip soon! 

Xoxo.

Seoul Part 1

I wanted to go on a grad trip with Sam last year but it was difficult for him to take leave so we had our holiday this year instead. We booked our tickets many months in advance so the built up excitement for our trip was huge - even though we had no clue what activities we were going to do until we reached Korea. I guess we were still excited because it was winter in Korea and after Iceland in 2013, we fell in love with the cold (and snow).

I took Baby Eeyore with me on this trip. Most of the time he lived in my pocket and only appeared when I remembered to take him out for pictures.

We boarded Scoot to Korea and transited at Taipei. It was a little tiring but since we were used to flying budget, it wasn't too bad. It also helped that our transit in Taipei was only about an hour long. 

We arrived in Seoul late at night so the first thing we did when we woke up the next morning was to head to a hair salon to get our hair fixed. Sam desperately needed a cut. He let his hair grow long for 2-3 months before our trip just for this haircut. I previously told him that Korean hair salons were awesome and we just had to try. I dyed my hair my natural hair colour because I just didn't want to maintain dyed (half brown, half dark brown) hair anymore. 

After the cut, Sam's hair looked like this and I found it so amusing because I couldn't get used to it. The hairstylist cut his hair very systematically and it looked super neat. For the next few days, he styled his hair just to maintain this look, until we came back to Singapore and it was back to square 1. He needs another cut.

After our little salon adventure, we met our Korean friend, Kyung Eun and she brought us to eat chicken stew. The warm soup was refreshingly awesome! The last time we saw her was almost 3 years ago in Iceland when we lived together for about 4 months or so.

After a short visit to Gyeongbokgung palace, she brought us to Samcheongdong. 

Found this stylish little shop selling men's accessories.

We walked to the top of some hill which overlooked Samcheongdong and Kyung Eun told us that the president stayed in that dark blue-roofed house in the distance, right at the end, before the mountains.

It was our first time coming here and the atmosphere was breathtaking!

Sam desperately wanted to eat authentic Korean BBQ so Kyung Eun brought us to this place in Insadong (or somewhere nearby). It was a little pricey but probably the best Korean BBQ we've ever tried. Yum!

The next day, we woke up at 4am and left Seoul for Alpensia to ski. It was such a tiring but fun day. It was also Sam's first time skiing and he picked up the sport just after 2-3 tries and 2 YouTube videos. I made the mistake of bringing him to the primary slope for his very first try instead of the bunny slope and he sped out of control all the way down. Oops!

After eventually finding and then practicing on the bunny slope, we headed to the primary slope and then moved up to the middle slope. This was all done in a day - that was how fast Sam picked up the sport! Just before leaving the resort, we decided to do one last hoorah by trying the high slope. Sam lost control almost immediately and while laughing at his hilarious fall, I fell too. This happened all the way down and because of that one try on the high slope, we ended up returning our ski clothes and gear entirely covered in snow.

Our crazy guts led us here...

The slopes look so shallow here but it's a huge contrast to what we experienced.

Can't wait to ski again!!!