Day 41: Chicken Soup & BTS

Today I had a bunch of different BTS places that I planned to visit.

The first was a cafe called &gather. BTS has a show called Run BTS that has 50+ short episodes. They go to a different place in each episode and do challenges or activities. In one of the more recent episodes they went to this cafe and each member had to try and make a different type of coffee. The cafe was only a 25 minute walk from where I was staying and it was close to the Han River. I walked to the cafe, got a scone and tea, and took lots of pictures.

After I finished my tea I walked down to the Han River. When I walked to Maebongsan park from Seoul forest a while ago I passed a park that looked super pretty. Unfortunately, I was walking on a bridge above it and wanted to catch the sunset that day so I didn’t have time to go look at it. The park was about an hour away from the place along the river that I walked down to and I wanted to find it today. I was able to walk on the paths along the river all the way there! I passed lots of basketball courts and small green areas. There was also a decent number of people out biking and enjoying the weather.

The park was super small but pretty. There were tons of the long plants with the fluffy stuff at the top that I really like as well as a tiny path that allowed people to walk through the grass. I took a few pictures and then continued to walk to the next stairway to get to a subway station.

When I made it to the main road I wasn’t sure which direction to go to find the station. I was looking at my phone when an older man came up to me and asked if I needed any help. He was super nice and pointed me in the right direction!

Agh I love the views of the Han River so much!

I got on the subway and was off to my next destination, which was a cafe called VT Pink House. BTS did a collaboration with VT cosmetics to make a cosmetic line for their BT21 brand and a cafe was built specifically for this collaboration. The first floor is a cafe in this bright pink building filled with pictures of BTS. The second floor is a shop where people can buy VT x BT21 products.

I bought a porridge cake thing and enjoyed looking around the cafe for a bit. Once I was done downstairs I went to the second floor to look at the makeup. I took a few pictures but didn’t buy anything since makeup is not something I am remotely interested in.

By the time I finished exploring the cafe it was a little past 3:30. I had plans to meet Kate and Martin for dinner in Dongdaemun at 6 so I decided to walk to a subway station and head back home. I chose to go to a station that was further away so I could look around the area a bit more. I also got off a subway stop early in Itaewon. From there I walked along a cool street filled with antique furniture shops to the Han River. I still had time to kill so I walked back along the Han River and then up past the cafe I had been to that morning.

The area I am staying in:

Once I got back to the apartment I played on my phone for a bit until it was time for dinner. Kate and I took a bus to Dongdaemun and then walked through some cool alleyways to get to the restaurant. The place we went to is a famous chicken soup restaurant. There is a really popular one beside it and the line up was huge. The one we ate at was for Koreans rather than foreigners so it was a little less busy. We sat down at the table and a waiter brought over a huge pot with an entire chicken in it. Then they took these gigantic scissors and just started to hack at it. Finally, they added a few rice cakes and water and we let it cook while we waited for Martin to join us. Kate said you are supposed to use the rice cakes to tell when the soup is ready to be eaten, which was interesting.

It was probably the best soup I’ve ever had! It was a little hard to eat the chicken with chopsticks but everything was amazing. Since they had the whole chicken in the soup they also gave each table a bucket to put the bones in after eating. There were potatoes, rice cakes, and leeks in the soup as well and I was so excited to eat more rice cakes. Each person also got a little dish where we could create our own sauce. There were different sauces on the table that we could mix together including red pepper and garlic paste, vinegar, soy sauce, and a couple other things. It was such an amazing dish and definitely something I would recommend to anyone going to Seoul!

After finishing all the soup we walked along the alley a little further and then came out to a popular river that runs through the middle of the city. We crossed down to the water and walked along it until we got to the shopping area.

We passed by a clothing market that Kate said is a really popular place for fashion designers to come to. There are lots of different shops inside of it with bits and pieces that designers can buy to then use to create clothing. It was closing when we got there so we continued on to the big mall area. I bought dessert in the mall and a face mask since there were dust warning for the next few days. I've been told that since South Korea is close to China, when the winds blow a certain way and during specific season, the pollution and chemicals from China will blow over Seoul and other parts of South Korea. When this happens the weather networks recommend staying inside as much as possible or wearing a mask. I'm sure that China is a big contributor to the air pollution, but it's probably not just them. One cool thing I learned from this is that North Seoul Tower (Namsan Tower) changes colour based on the air quality. Red or orange is an indication of bad air quality.

I am going to a concert tomorrow and planning to spend lots of time outside and on the subway so I purchased a mask. They are really common so I was able to get one for 3000 won at a convenience store in the mall. I don't know if I will actually wear it because it doesn't seem particularly comfortable, but at least I have one if I decide to.

I have to leave later in the morning (but still earlier than I normally wake up) to get to the concert venue tomorrow so I'm going to bed early.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(November 5)

Distance walked: 17.8 km