Day 68: Tour Guide Kate

Today I met my hosts from a few weeks ago, Kate and Martin, to spend the day with them. Kate had planned our activities for the day and she had based them off the recommendations BTS had made as the ambassadors for Seoul, which was so kind of her! I met at their house around 1:30 and Kate and I set off for Namsan Tower. Martin had just finished a marathon that morning so he was going to take a break and then join us a little later for dinner.

Our first stop was Namsan Tower where Jin (as the ambassador of 'Historic Seoul') had recommended seeing the daily traditional martial arts performance that is held beside the tower. We arrived a little early so we wandered around and then bought some drinks and popcorn to stay warm. Kate also showed me a torch that they light every day at a certain time. It's on the highest point of this mountain. We were a little late to the performance, but it was an hour long so it was ok. It was held in the main square beside the tower and it was amazing! I don't know the proper names for any of the performances, but there were sword dances and several people performed with these huge poles. One person did a solo dance with two swords and it was really cool to watch (I filmed a bit of it, but tried to just watch the rest). I didn't take any pictures of the performance, but here are some photos of the stone wall we passed on the way up the Namsan.

After the performance we walked down the other side of the mountain to get to Seoullo 7017, which was recommended by Jimin (I don't know if they actually recommended these places or they just chose some for the site, but they were good places to check out regardless). It took us awhile to walk down the mountain, but we passed some great views and Kate showed me a cute park area along the way. She would make a great tour guide because she knows a lot of facts about Seoul and sightseeing places! For example. the stone wall and memorial that we passed is on land that was originally bought by hotels and made private. People couldn't go see these historical monuments or areas because they were owned by hotels. They were only recently opened up to the public.

We passed through a building that had cool ceiling lights on the way to the walkway.

Seoullo 7017 was so beautiful! It used to be an overpass highway, but it became too old for people to continue driving on it safely. Instead of demolishing the highway, it was turned into a walkway that is lined with all sorts of different plants. The plants are grown in separate pots and many of them have sweet song lyrics carved into the pot. The walkway has an amazing view of the city and it lights up at night. I love city views so I really enjoyed seeing this.

We walked all the way to the end of the pathway where we found a rose garden and cafe. We were both surprised to see that there were many roses that were still alive! We wandered around trying to find which type had the best smell and then we stopped by the cafe to see if they had any interesting drinks. The drinks that they offered were similar to lots of regular cafes so we didn't buy anything. We walked back to the start of the walkway and then set off to meet Martin for dinner.

I have started seeing a lot of Christmas lights around the city, which are beautiful but they also make me feel a little homesick.

We met Martin at one of the department stores and went to the basement for dinner. Department stores here are much more intense than ones in Waterloo! They have so many floors and the entire basement is typically really yummy and nice food places. They make for a great dinner place when you want lots of options that aren't expensive.

After dinner I left to go home, but got distracted by Myeongdong street. I decided to walk down the street to look for some Christmas gifts. There was also a Jin birthday cafe event that was approximately a 30 minute walk in the direction of Myeongdong street.

There were so many decorations and the street was very busy! I stopped inside the Line Friends store briefly (they sell BT21 items), but I was able to convince myself not to buy anything.

I passed over a stream that had little heart decorations hanging above it.

I also found a cool temple along the way that was lit up and looked really pretty.

By the time I finally made it to the Jin cafe near Insadong it had closed... oops! I was in the mood for tea now though so I found some other Jin cafes near the station I am staying at and took the subway back to Gangnam. I stopped at Amy's Coffee near Hakdong station and got a cute purple cup! There was also a huge stack of previous event cup sleeves that had nice messages on them.

It was almost 9 o'clock by now but I still wanted to see more cafe events! I walked to another one called Cafe Namu. It took a little over half an hour to get there, but that gave me time to drink my first tea. I passed by Starship Entertainment on the way to my next stop!

The event at Cafe Namu was awesome! The fan site had provided the cafe with a little goodie pack to hand out to fans in addition to the cup sleeves. The package had multiple photo cards and a sticker.

All the freebies at this cafe got me super excited to go to more. Ella and I decided to meet up the next day and go cafe hopping to try and collect as many photo cards as possible. There is nothing like this at home so I need to take advantage of it while I can, plus I like tea (although I'll probably be pretty tired of it after this).

It took me 20 minutes to walk back home and then I got into planning mode. I researched all the cafes and fan sites and made a list of which ones were offering the best goodies. Then I tagged them on my map to figure out which ones were close to each other so we could go to as many as possible in the shortest period of time. I may have gone a little overboard with the planning but oh well, it was fun! I'm super excited for tomorrow... I just hope I don't get sick of tea.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 2, 2018)

Distance walked: 22.1 km

P.S I have booked my flight home! I forgot to add it to the post on the day I actually booked it so I am just mentioning it here. I fly back on January 1! I'm super excited to see my family but also very sad to be leaving Korea. I'm enjoying my vacation so much and I honestly never want it to end.