Seoul Day 2: Hongdae, Insadong & Around

After our packed first day in Seoul, we still woke up by around 5:30am on the second day, which was a Sunday (thanks jetlag!). Paul grabbed some coffee from the GS25 convenience store across the street from our hotel, then we leisurely got ready for the day.

It was quite chilly in the morning, and we took a short walk along Cheongyecheon stream, which included an egret sighting. We visited Chongyecheon back in 2011; it's a great urban space where the city government demolished an unsightly elevated highway to uncover an old stream. The city was quiet this early on a weekend morning, and we enjoyed a walk past city hall and along the wall of Doeksugung palace. We stopped at the cute Jeongwangsu coffee shop and had a delightful "matcha spanner." We learned that a spanner is a popular Korean drink based on the Vienna Einspänner, and essentially just means it comes with a layer of whipped cream.

Cheongyecheon stream early in the morning.

Paul walking across the stream.

Seoul city hall has some wild architecture.

Chicago style pizza in Seoul!

Walking along the palace walls.

A yummy pastry and matcha drinks for breakfast.

Our next stop was the Seoul Museum of History. On the way there we walked through the Donuimun Museum Village for a few minutes. It's an outdoor series of buildings that preserves the look of Seoul in the 1950s and 60s. It was an interesting place to spend a few minutes wandering.

The Seoul Museum of History was a nice stop, with good exhibits on the history of the city, and a really cool massive diorama of the city with a light show.

We happened to walk by the Canadian embassy.

A building in the Donuimon Museum Village.

Uh, what?

The city diorama.

Replica of a 1980s Seoul apartment.

Before and after photos showing development in the city.

After the museum, we wanted to get some dalkgalbi for lunch in Hongdae. Hongdae is a "cool people" neighborhood near Hongik University. This is a very popular nightlife district which also features a long semi-pedestrianized shopping street. To get from the city center to Hongdae, we hopped on a bus, which ran like a BRT and was super easy. We wandered around and did some shopping (including "Muzik Tiger," a great pop-up store) before getting lunch.

Getting around Seoul is in general is super easy using public transit and walking, but unfortunately, as of Spring 2024, Google and the Korean government are in a dispute about where and how travel data is stored on servers, rendering Google Maps basically useless. This means you have to use Korean-produced mapping and travel apps for navigation. Naver was the app recommended to us, and was pretty easy to use overall. Just something to keep in mind until the dispute is resolved!

When we visited back in 2011, we went to a nearby neighborhood (Sinchon) for dalkgalbi and pretty much have loved it since then. Dalkgalbi is basically chicken with gochujang (pepper paste) with cabbage and rice cakes (tteok) that you usually cook for yourself on a large grill. This is one of the few Korean foods that we can't find in Atlanta, so this meal had been talked about and planned weeks in advance! This trip we went to Shin Migyeong, which was tasty but came to our table already cooked. Fortunately we still got to heat it and let all the flavors combine at our table.

Hongdae bear, why you gotta be so fly?! Also...why are you coming out of the sewer!?

Hongdae shopping street.

Cute Shop!

David digging into the dalkgalbi. We think this is a must-eat dish when in Korea.

After lunch we walked around in Hongdae more, popping into shops and doing some people watching. One thing we noticed this trip in Korea, that we didn't ten years ago, was the proliferation of shops where (mostly) girls enter to take photos. It seemed like the shops offered props, good lighting, backdrops, etc. There were legitimately dozens of these places in the ~ 1 km walk we did along Hongdae Shopping Street. After noticing them here, we started noticing them all over Seoul. I guess they're just a fun thing you can do and reminded us a bit of the photo both type kiosks we saw in Tokyo back in 2011 as well.

Eventually, we reached the end of the shopping street at AK Plaza. This was a very narrow department store/mall with each floor themed to a different genre of shop. We noticed some Final Fantasy/Anime content outside, so we figured we'd pop in and look around. At the top floor was a Square-Enix Cafe (which we were planning on visiting in Tokyo in 2 weeks) and a ton of gamer, anime, trinket and clothing shops throughout. This shopping center was extremely packed and very lively with people eating at food stalls and popping in and out of the shops.

The opposite side of the AK Plaza was the start of the Gyeongui Line Forest Park. This park is a rail-trail, similar to the Beltline in Atlanta along an old abandoned rail line. It's basically a kinda small sidewalk beside a nice strip of grace/trees nestled in the neighborhood extending about 1 km from the end of the Hongdae Shopping Street. It goes through some really cute neighborhoods and, even with the weather not being the best, was very well utilized by people going from point A to B or walking their dogs. Overall a nice amenity for a city that is a bit light on parks.

David in front of a Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth ad.

Gyeongui Line Forest Park

They left a bit of the rail here and there for aesthetics.

At the end of the Gyeongui Line Forest Park, there's a cute little coffee shop that Paul read about before we started the day. The place is called Coffee Nap Roasters and is a really unique space with hilly brick floor (yes, a brick hill, check out the photos) and limited seating around the sides. You're able to sit on the slope if you'd like, but no one was while we were there. The drinks were really nice here, and overall Korea has a really good coffeeshop scene with good attention to detail, good variety in types of drinks (since David doesn't drink coffee) and really interesting interior design. Paul loved his coffee (#420), which was an iced coffee with flavored foam and David enjoyed his floral milk tea.

After sitting for a few mins, we walked around the neighborhood (Yeonnam) a bit before heading back towards the city center. There were lots of cute little pedestrian alleys. The area was nice and quiet and there were a several little restaurants and coffee shops. Honestly, we're not sure how so many coffee shops stay in business in Seoul. 

Coffee Nap Roasters' interesting layout.

Paul's flavored foam iced coffee.

Yeonnam Neighborhood is super cute and quiet.

Next we took another bus from Yeonnam to Insadong to visit Jogyesa temple. Jogyesa is a Buddhist temple near the center of Seoul that we visited back in 2011 and really enjoyed. Unfortunately, the weather turned pretty bad and cut our time wandering around Insadong short. Before it started raining too hard, we did manage to look at Jogyesa a bit, walk around some Insadong shopping areas (including a 4 story complex with a winding path through about 50 shops), and find our way to the Michelin bib gourmand Gaesong Mandu Koong for an impromtu late second lunch (or early dinner depending on your point of view). Gaesong specializes in dumpling and jeon (savory pancakes). We shared a small jeon and variety pack of six dumplings. This restaurant is pretty touristy, and probably not our favorite meal of the time in Seoul.

After eating we tried to wander around the Ikseon-dong area, which has lots of traditional/older Korean houses that were converted to nice bars, restaurants and shops but it was too crowded and it started to pour so we just made our way back to the hotel to rest for a while. The walk back to the hotel was about 20 minutes and we got very wet... 😞

Cool building we walked past.

Gate leading towards Jogyesa.

The weather took a turn for the worse...but still a cool tree!

Who doesn't love a good juxtaposition?

Jogyesa is a favorite location from our last trip to Seoul.

Walking through Insadong in the rain towards dumplings.

This was an awkwardly timed meal, but there's always room for some dumplings and a jeon.

Courtyard in Ikseon-dong area. There are lots of hanoks and renovated shops here. Wish we had more time to look around before the rain!

After resting for a while, and considering we had just eaten dumpling and jeon, we decided to skip a bigger meal and to hit up a cocktail bar instead. This trip, across 3 of the 4 cities (not Tokyo), we made a point to visit cocktail bars. Overall, these were good experiences but we found that the flavors were generally more subtle than the US and the drinks very light on alcohol. We had no trouble with 2 or 3 drinks at most places we visited, which, in America or Europe, would have left us more tipsy.

To kick it all off, we visited a speakeasy cocktail bar we saw on a youtube video near our hotel in Myeongdong named Sookhee. The interior and menu were really cool, but the place is hard to find. Basically, you have to walk into an alley, go up an elevator to the 4th floor (which seems empty when you arrive) and then hit a button to have a machine open a door for you. Just google around if you want more details on getting in.

While here, we ordered a burrata with gochujang and perilla leaves as a snack and got a couple cocktails each. The interior design was really cool and the menu is on a scroll they roll out for you. Overall the place had a really nice atmosphere and was fairly crowded, but we only had to wait about 15 minutes to get a table.

The menu at Sookhee was on a scroll they rolled out for you. The drawings were really cute.

Super fancy, if not super alcoholic cocktail.

Probably the best drink we had, Korean pear and gin.

Burrata with gochujang on a bed of perilla leaves. Odd but good.

Interior design was a solid A. Looked a bit like a Korean Buddhist temple but with lots of mother-of-pearl pictures.

Heading back to the hotel through Myeong-dong in the rain.

That wrapped up the day in Seoul. We went to bed and crossed our fingers for less rainy weather the next day, which would be our final day in the city before flying to Singapore.