After our Saturday morning in Myeongdong, I wanted to go to the DDP (Dongdaemun Design Plaza). I had seen tons of videos of it online and am just obsessed with its architecture and unique crashing-UFO design. It just so happened that the tail-end of Seoul Fashion Week was underway, so we had free entertainment! I previously posted about this while we were still in Korea, so you can read that here if you want.

These flowers are so pretty and light up at night!

 

I could have easily stayed here all day long and people-watched, but the one thing that I should say is that I spent a good chunk of our trip with this terrible Chasing the White Rabbit mentality, where I felt like we were running out of time, and I was in a near-constant state of panic that we weren’t doing enough. At the end of each day though, I went to bed grateful that we were even there at all, trust me! And even the times Henry got us lost, after my anger subsided I was able to reason that at least we were lost in freakin’ SEOUL. And honestly, that allowed us to see parts of the city that we might not have seen otherwise, lol!

The DDP was within walking distance from our hotel so we took a leisurely stroll back, where the intention was to “rest” for “an hour or so.” But first we got some piping hot croquettes from a vendor (mine was kimchi, I always opted for kimchi fillings whenever that was an option because my love affair with that fermented babe is real). Chooch got a potato one and I was so happy that he was actually eating things. Henry and I were afraid that he’s starve to death in Korea because he’s so goddamn picky. But he promised us that he would try things and he really did uphold his end of the deal.

If you read my Naksan sunset post from last week, you might recognize that wall. It’s the Seoul Fortress Wall and if we had followed it down from Naksan Park, it would have brought us all the way down to the Heunginjimun Gate which I photographed on our very first night in Seoul when we were half-asleep and shambling around in the dark like American zombies. When we made this realization the next evening in Naksan Park, I got so excited because I am always completely confused by maps and geography so it was cool to start having pieces of Seoul fall into place in my mind’s compass, you know?

You can’t go through the Gate, but look at the beautiful design on the ceiling!

After this, we walked down the street and popped into Gwangjang Market (formerly Dongdaemun Market which we were desperately trying to find, unbeknownst that it changed names) where Chooch confidently walked up to a vendor and ordered a fresh fruit juice. He was so proud of himself! Simple things like ordering a drink can be daunting in a foreign country and I give him major props for wanting to do this himself instead of relying on Henry and me. That kid is really going to go places someday, I’m sure of it.

We also got our first real Korean bindaetteok (mung bean pancake) and I was in clogged artery heaven.

This was in the plaza right next to our hotel (Hotel Atrium). Chooch was desperate for me to take this picture (Gwangjang fruit juice cameo!) and two young girls giggled when they walked past so my new dream is for Chooch to get a Korean girlfriend, move to Korea, and let me visit 10 times a year.

So then we went back to the room to “rest” which inevitably turned into a three hour nap because our bodies were telling us that it was 3AM. When we woke up, all of us, it was nearly 7PM. I felt like absolute shit. It’s been awhile since I last traveled this far (Australia was the farthest for me) so I can’t remember how badly my previous bouts with jetlag were, and I was also much younger too so probably more resilient at that. But when I woke up, I felt like I had the flu. Full body chills, feverish, just really awful. I was scared that I actually have the flu because I’ve been surrounded by it at work, and wouldn’t that just be my luck? To finally make it to Korea and wind up sick in a hotel room for most of it.

Henry said he was fine with whatever I decided to do but I refused to lay around in the room and wanted to at least go for a walk to see how I would feel. We walked to a nearby Paris Baguette where I had an Americano and milk bread, and then just like that, I was fine. I started to wonder if maybe that was my body reacting to the yellow dust?

We took the subway to the start of Cheonggyecheon so we could check out Cheonggye Plaza. Turns out there was some Earth Day event thing going on where they were turning off all the lights for an hour and having a small concert, so Chooch got to have his picture taken with a panda, which is all he cared about. Seriously, he could be having the worst day, but then someone will walk by in an animal suit and it’s suddenly a brand new day for him.

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I think I will remember this night at the first time we were approached by locals, asking us where we’re from, etc. I had a nice conversation with a young guy at the stream about how he used to live in DC, and then earlier on our way to the stream, a young guy eating an ice cream cone approached us too. It was really exciting for me because I LOVE KOREANS and was so happy that someone wanted to talk to us. It was very overwhelming for us on thus first full day but there was just enough random kindness and helpfulness to make us feel less like aliens.

Also, most people just ignored us on the subway so that wasn’t nearly as scary as I had built it up in my mind and every single fucking day since we’ve been home, I’ve shed legit tears thinking about how much I miss it. I told Henry earlier today that I think I imprinted on the entire Korean transit system.

“Is that weird?” I asked.

“Not for you,” he said, unfazed by my soul-splitting admission.

We left the plaza and walked for a while but then HANGER set in so Henry frantically went into “FIND FOOD” mode before Chooch and I ate him alive.

Deoksugung Palace.

Bosingak Bell Pavilion, which Henry kept calling a Palace and we were like NOT EVERYTHING IS A PALACE! Honestly though, it seems like no matter what direction you walk around Seoul, you will inevitably turn a corner on one of these ancient beauties. I loved it so much.

Originally, we were going to get pizza because I needed to judge for myself just how “weird” Korean pizza is supposed to be, but we wound up filling up on street food which is, in our defense, very easy and fast to do.

And so goddamn delicious.

I could eat hotteok for every meal. In fact, some random YouTube video about hotteok was just playing as I’m typing this and now I’m drinking a dixie cup of a tears/saliva blend. I’ve had hotteok at Korean food festivals here in the States but there is nothing like burning the fuck out of your mouth on that piping hot brown sugar filling while standing on the streets of actual Seoul, Korea — how was this a reality just a mere two weeks ago!?

Chooch got something from an Isaac Toast walk-up window and didn’t like it all that much, but I was like, “GIVE ME THAT” and then ended up eating all of it because holy fuck how do they take something so simple as bread and egg and cheese and turn it into God’s own hangover breakfast? There was something about the sauce, for god’s sake, that sauce. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but it tasted something like honey mustard mixed with mayo? Henry, am I wrong? (LOL, like he would know, I barely let him have any!) We saw another Issac Toast window earlier that day when we were in Myeongdong and the line for it was about a block long. Now I understand why. I know that there is at least one location in Seoul where you can actually go inside and I kept saying I wanted to find it but then I kept getting distracted by all of the other shiny things Seoul has to offer, so I never did get another Isaac toast.

We started walking back to the hotel after that, and even though it was after 10 by then, all of the shops were still open. Chooch went to a candy shop and bought his own stuff and then promptly hid it from Henry in the hotel.

It was a good (and filling) end to the first full day. Please hurry up and get me back there ASAP.

Getting ready to embarrass Henry on the hotel elevator: A Korean Tradition

Can we do a side-bar for a second and get kind of uncharacteristically mushy? OK great.

Not everyone thought it was a great idea for us to take Chooch with us to Korea (“it’s too expensive;” “he’s too young;” “it’s dangerous over there!”*). And believe me, it would have saved us a lot of money if it was just Henry and me, and we could have gone to G-Dragon’s pension and Kpop countdown shows and, you know, bars — all of the things an 11-year-old is too young for. (Seriously, GD’s pension and all the countdown shows have age restrictions, so lame!)

*(Dangerous in South Korea? We’d all have a better chance of getting shot in America than getting nuked in South Korea, sorry.)

But I couldn’t leave him behind. He has been just as much a part of this journey as Henry has, so how is that fair? And ever since I became a mom, it’s been my dream to be able to do for him what my Pappap did for me, and that was opening up the world for me when I was an impressionable child. He took me to Europe every summer and that’s something that really shaped who I am—it made me appreciate other cultures, it opened my mind, and it made me cherish travel in general even if it’s just a two-hour road trip to some small town with quirky roadside attractions. I have the best childhood memories because of my Pappap and the adventures he took me on, and I have always wanted so much for my own kid to grow up and have veritable tomes of fond memories to flip through. (For me, it’s tangible tomes because I wrote in vacation journals with fervor back then and still leaf through them every now and then!)

At the Alive Museum in Insadong, which I didn’t want to do but Henry was like WE HAVE TO THROW CHOOCH A BONE ONCE IN AWHILE.

So we had to work a little harder (read: a lot harder) to make sure that Chooch could come with us.

I was nervous because if you have ever been around the two of us, Chooch and me, you have probably at some point seen us viciously snipe at each other like siblings. This is because we are essentially the same person. I had visions of us fighting the entire time we were in Korea, and having my experience completely tainted by resentment.

But then the exact opposite happened.

KOREA MADE US BFFS!

Yeouido Hangang Park selfie

We ended up bro’ing up against Henry for some reason and collected so many inside jokes in our pockets that there were times we’d be in the middle of the street (or the aforementioned elevator) and just totally lose our minds at the mere thought of Henry looking at a map. And then there was this one time in Busan when Henry was talking about the high-speed trains and how he saw one go “rippin’ past” which made us double-over in laugh-pain and spend the next two days mercilessly reenacting Henry’s “rippin'” amazement. Henry was not as amused about this as we were, surprisingly, and kept storming off, dismissing us with a flick of his hand, telling us to go to hell, and “good luck getting back to the hotel” and “have fun finding something to eat tonight.”

Gyeongbokgung selfie because the picture Henry took of us sucked

Getting ready for a night at Hongdae / bad hotel room lighting selfie

I think I will always associate our pilgrimage to Korea with side-splitting laughter, mean girl shenanigans, and just pure undulterated joy (even though our joy was nearly Henryerated from time to time – he apparently hates the sound of our laughter because it’s “embarrassing”).

Didn’t even bother wiping the ice cream from my lip for this Gamcheon selfie because I WAS A KID AGAIN AND IT WAS FANTASTIC!

At one point I said to Henry, “When did Chooch become so funny? Was he always this funny?” and Henry just sneered at me like I was delirious because Henry was not impressed with our humor AT ALL. This just made it even funnier!

Henry should feel blessed that he was the source of so much of our laughter though. There was another time in Busan where we were at a beach and he was like, “I bet this place is rockin’ in the summer” which made Chooch and I wheeze, “ROCKIN’!!!!!!!” So the laughter started all over again and before we knew it, Henry was like three blocks ahead of us while we were still collapsing into each other and trying not to pee our pants (I came super close multiple times, not apologizing for the TMI because if you’re here, you should expect that!).

Songdo Cable Car selfie!

Even when we were shopping, there wasn’t a single time that Chooch did the “kid sigh” or suddenly “didn’t feel good” — you know, the things that kids do on vacation when the grown-ups have the audacity to do a thing that they want to do? I think this was a good age to start taking him on big trips.

The “Henry has us on a bus in Busan, will we survive?” selfie

Subway reflection selfie!

Every time Henry would say something to us, we would repeat it using an Eeyore-esque voice and I think he was really considering back-handing us several times. We were out of control! I honestly can’t remember the last time I have ever laughed that hard and consistently; it was honestly an everyday occurrence. Korea is just the best!

Busan Station slaphappiness

So that last picture isn’t a selfie but I wanted to include it because it involves another source of our pants-peeing hilarity. Chooch took a picture of Henry squatting and putting something in my pink backpack and for some reason, we latched on to this picture and cracked up to the point where I am certain there appeared to be something wrong with us. Chooch made so many different edits of this picture and it wil never not be funny to us. I actually was walking down the hall at work on Wednesday and started thinking about it and then the giggles visited me straight from Busan Station and there I was, laughing alone at work, because some things never change. I texted Henry to tell him I couldn’t stop laughing and when he asked why, I responded by texting him that picture and he was like, “go fuck yourself.”

Our relationship became almost symbiotic in Korea, and I will always cherish that! We were on the same wavelength, didn’t grate on each other like we do at home (lol), and just honestly enjoyed each others’ company. Thank you, Korea! What a life-changing experience.

(We love you, Henry!)

ETA: Henry just now said, “All you had to write was ‘Me and Chooch were assholes in Korea’ and be done with it.” Ok but I would have said “Chooch and I” instead.

A lot of my friends kept asking for our itinerary before we left, and well, we didn’t really have one. I just had a list of all the major areas of Seoul I wanted to visit, and get in lost in thanks to Henry (but even though I was really annoyed at the amount of directionless wandering we did, I eventually reasoned that hey, we might be lost, but at least we’re lost in SOUTH KOREA #brightside). So every morning, we’d wing it. I think that kind of harried, unorganized travel non-plan really suits us, though.

For our first morning, we woke up around 3am because jetlag. Luckily, there were a million convenience stores nearby, and Henry latched on to the GS25 around the corner and became a regular during our time there. We dined on packaged Korean pastries—I’m sorry, but I will eat the fuck out of anything filled with pat (red bean). I also finally had legit Binggrae banana milk and expected it to be gross because I typically don’t enjoy banana-flavored things, but this was like perfectly-sweetened liquid silk, I can’t even explain it. I would be so fat if I lived in Korea because I would probably drink it more than I drink coffee and I drink a lot of coffee if you didn’t know.

Chooch became obsessed with Shiro and Maro because he’s really into Corgis and Shiba Inus, so Korea was his Babylon in that respect. He made Henry get him one of these every day so he could collect the stickers.

While we were sitting there waiting for the rest of the city to wake up. I mean, Seoul truly never sleeps so we could have probably walked outside and easily found a soju bar still rockin’ at 5am, but we’re old people with an 11-year-old so we figured we’d just wait for the regular things to open.

I decided that I wanted to go to Myeongdong first. This is an area of Seoul known for all of its makeup shops and Kpop-blasting. But first, we had to fuck around with the subway! There was this thing called the Korea Tour Card that Henry wanted to get, because it’s made specifically for foreigners and gives you discounts into some of the palaces and shops, etc. But you can only purchase it in some locations, so we had to go to the station close to us (there were two — our hotel was super convenient) and get a ticket to Seoul Station.

Chooch ended up understanding the subway lines way before Henry which I think is hilarious. The amount of times Chooch got us un-lost was amazing to me and crippling to Henry’s man-of-the-house masculinity.

Long story short, it ended up taking over an hour trying to locate this stupid tourist card because Henry wouldn’t listen to us and insisted on walking us in circles around Seoul Station, and then when I found an American lady in front of us at one of the T-Money machines, I asked her how to get one and she was all, “Oh  you can get one using this machine!” which is what Chooch and I kept telling Henry but he was like NO THAT IS NOT RIGHT. Meanwhile, two other foreign tourists approached Henry and gave him their T-Money cards because they were leaving and didn’t need them anymore. They weren’t the ones that Henry wanted, but it was still a sweet deal because T-Money cards are like $4 a piece, plus the fare money that you have to load onto them. And then all we had to get was purchase a child card through the machine for Chooch and luckily that was pretty much the end of our subway saga pretty much for our entire stay. Seoul’s subway system is amazing and relatively simple to master—we used it multiple times a day while there and it saved us so much time and money!

Plus the subway stations are filled with beautiful kpop idols.

We ran into this on our walk to Myeongdong and if you know Chooch, you know that he has to have his picture taken at every character statue thing he comes across which was cute when he was 4….

Anyway, by the time we made it to Myeongdong, it was still pretty early on Saturday morning so it wasn’t TOO NUTS yet but it was quickly getting there! The food vendors were already out and  the kpop was blasting – it was just like how I imagined!

Myeongdong is the perfect cocktail of trendy makeup shops, stalls full of cheap but adorable socks (Chooch and I were sock-obsessed and bought a ton), and FOOD.

Side bar: We prayed the whole time that Trump wouldn’t plan his North Korea talk while we were there. It was already nerve-wracking just being an American over there. (I was practicing my “eh”s and “aboots” and “soory”s and maple syrup facts just in case – love you, Canada!!) Actually, there were huge protests going on all day on Saturday and there were actual busloads of police all over the street near our hotel. People were standing on things and yelling, but other than that, it didn’t seem violent. I couldn’t tell what was going on, but there were people holding the American flag and that made me nervous.

“Well, at least they’re waving it and not burning it,” Henry pointed out.

“What type of Hell did the subway bring me to?”

BTS and EXO were everywhere in Myeongdong because they’re the faces of various skincare lines. So is the actor Gong Yoo, and he’s one of my favorites so I definitely didn’t mind seeing his handsome face on every other store window!

Then we stumbled upon the Line Friends store and Chooch was like, “YES, FUN TIME!” I have to say, he was pretty content doing all of the things I wanted to do, as well, but we did try to carve out time each day for Chooch-appropriate activities, as well. Luckily (or sadly?), there are Line Friends and Kakao Friends stores in pretty much every major neighborhood of Seoul so he really enjoyed that.

I hate this picture of me, but the one where I looked normal was the one where Henry cut off Sally (the duck on the top of Brown’s head) because he is the literal worst person ever to take pictures. He never tells us when he’s taking the picture so I’m usually in the middle of talking or yawning or my hair’s in my face, and he’s just like, “K, done” and then walks away!? WE HAD TO STAND IN LINE FOR THIS FUCKING PICTURE!

Chooch would have went home with every one of these plushes if I was a nicer mom. But I only let him pick out one. A much smaller one, lol.

Or if I was more like my Pappap, who for sure would have had them all shipped back to Pittsburgh. He was the best.

(He was also a millionaire. I am not a millionaire.)

Henry was not happy about posing for this picture and refused to  go inside the store to stand next to his bias, Jimin. I went inside and saw that they were selling BTS toothpaste sets and I really wanted one but then I was like, “Erin, you do not need a BTS toothpaste set.”

BUT NOW THAT I’M HOME I REALIZE THAT YES, YES I DO NEED A BTS TOOTHPASTE SET! I just hate shopping.

Then we had street food! We got some ttkeobokki and mayak kimbap to share. Chooch was like, “No, I like it. I swear I like it. It’s um…just a little spicy.”

Tteokbokki is my actual favorite. Henry makes it for me at home sometimes and I had to say, his is pretty comparable! I still prefer actual Korean street ttkeobokki of course. This was when I started to realize that the last year and a half of eating a 90% Korean diet has really dulled my tongue because when all the street vendors were warning us of things being “hot! very spicy!” I was like, “This isn’t spicy at all??” while Henry and Chooch were coughing out fireballs.

Looking back at our first day, it feels like such a blur. We were all still very jet-lagged and it also just felt completely like a dream. I kept catching myself looking around and staring at everything with my mouth hanging open like a farmgirl seeing the big city for the first time. It was just so stimulating, such a sensory free-for-all, walking down these streets that I have seen so many times on my TV, in YouTube videos and in dramas, hearing all of my favorite songs blasting at full volume, having an elderly man in a kpop merch shop showing Chooch and me his collection of Twice of memorabilia (I ended up buying a Taemin vinyl thingie to go with my G-Dragon one that I thought someone stole a few months ago!)

Be back later with part 2 of day 1! I am drowning in photo-editing.

Hi guys! It’s Friday evening and we’re on the KTX back to Seoul. Busan was really cool and Henry at one point said, “You’d need at least 5 days here to be able to get to do everything” and I took that to mean our next trip here will be three weeks long, so thanks for giving me something to look forward to Papa H!

One of many reasons I wanted to squeeze in Busan was because their cherry blossom season starts a bit earlier than Seoul’s and I feel like we’d be remiss to come to Korea without seeing a cherry blossom. Henry doesn’t get the appeal and made some remark about how he used to see cherry blossoms all the time when he was a kid wearing cardboard taped to his shoes in the 1940s.

Whatever, Hank.

Here are some photos of cherry blossoms!

I’ll do a proper Busan recap in the near future, but I will forever associate it with Chooch and I spraying the streets with our hysterical giddiness (I had to keep standing with my legs crossed so I wouldn’t pee) while Henry would stomp off and say, “to hell with you assholes!” Oh my god, we’re having so much fun and sometimes Henry tries to get in on the joke until he realizes that the joke is him. Why is everything he does so hilarious to us?!

For example, while I was in the restroom at Busan Station, Chooch took like 25 pictures of Henry squatting while putting stuff in my backpack and then showed me a few minutes later while we were in a cafe waiting for the train and we were laughing so uproariously that Henry got up and left us and now I’m sitting on this quiet-ass train thinking about it all over again and trying not to laugh out loud.

Oh, another thing we’ve been laughing about is that since we were only coming here overnight, we just packed the backpacks that Chooch and I brought with us. Chooch shoved the Kakao Friends plush-pillow thing he bought the other day into his backpack which took up every last centimeter of free space.

It ended up being really chilly in Busan last night since it’s right on the beach and Henry was wearing a t-shirt. He was so angry, because Chooch and I both packed jackets but he blamed Chooch’s stuffed animal for why he didn’t pack a jacket.

“Chooch had to bring that fucking thing with him so there wasn’t any room for me to pack my stuff!” Henry whined. I’m sorry, you couldn’t have tied your jacket around your waist like I did with mine?!

Oh, another day, another lament.

Ugh I love Korea so much!!

P.S. Chooch just leaned over and said, “it went rippin’ past” and now we’re giggling all over again because that’s what Henry said earlier about one of the high-speed trains and I don’t know why but it was SO FUCKING FUNNY to us so we kept saying it over and over while making circles with our heads and Henry was like GOODBYE. Also, he said something about how the beaches here are probably “rockin'” in the summer and I keep picturing Henry at a fucking sock hop ever since then.

Sunday in Seoul was full of activity, from Insadong (first official Korean bibimbap!) to Yeouido (we went to 3 Birds, a cafe owned by YG Entertainment, BIGBANG’s agency!), but for my quick update I want to focus on our hike to Naksan Park for some sunset-viewing. Henry rues the day I watched Joan Keem’s vlog about the best sunset view in Seoul because I became fixated on it and when I become fixated on something, well, you know the outcome.

Fun fact: In Hangul, “nakta” means camel and “san” means mountain, so that’s where Naksan Mountain gets its name, because it’s shaped like a camel’s hump. 

We left our hotel a bit after 5 to set off to Naksan, which Henry swore was “super close” yet it took us about an hour to get there. We almost gave up at one point because the directions Henry got online were super vague, and but then suddenly we rounded a corner in a super-popping college neighborhood and saw a sign that said NAKSAN PARK with an arrow pointing up the steepest fucking cobblestone-y road. Chooch was like *groan groan groan* and Henry’s moustache had turned into an undulating mass of middle fingers aimed at my direction, but then once we reached the top of the park, where all the observation areas were, everyone was suddenly in a great mood again. I mean, how could you not be, the view was breathtaking.

Here’s a shitload of photos from my camera and phone.

This place was definitely a date-area. There were so many adorable young couples and believe the hype, you guys – couple culture in Korea is STRONG. It’s just like what you see in dramas — they love to match, they hold each other while walking, and the aegyo (over-the-top cuteness) is off the charts. We even passed a couple playing kai bai bo and I almost cried.

I love it here so much.

You can see the tops of the DDP down there to the right.

Chooch was happy because he saw many dogs and also got to pet TWO cats.

“I love it here,” he exclaimed at one point during our walk back to the hotel, suddenly forgetting about how much “pain” he was in on the trek there. I warned him months ago that he better get his ass in shape because I don’t play around when traveling!

Chooch waited patiently for a young couple to finish taking pictures of each other petting this cat, and when it was his turn, he was so excited that the couple turned around as they were walking away and giggled at him.

“Cat!” the guy giggled to Chooch and it was so fucking charming.

His face in this picture, though.

After walking back down from the park, we dined on street food. Chooch has decided that twigum (fried food), specifically the kimbap variety, is his favorite food here so far. I’m still down with tteokbokki though. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of it!

I would stay here forever if I could.