Day 88: Iryeong Station

I was super excited for today's trip! Iryeong Station is an abandoned train station outside of Seoul where Taehyung filmed part of the Spring Day music video (one of the most beautiful BTS mvs). Ella and I were hoping for some snow, but there was no snow in the forecast for the next week so we gave up on waiting and just went. It took over an hour to subway and bus there, but we snacked on chips and looked out the window and the time passed quickly.

We were surprised to see that the station wasn't in the middle of nowhere. There was a school nearby as well as several homes and stores. We walked down a little alleyway beside some homes to get to there. It was really cute and a perfect place for taking pictures! I could also see very far down both sides of the tracks and it was so nice to see mountains and few buildings. Ella had been practicing the dance to Spring Day for a couple days and I filmed her dancing near the station sign. She also danced to Idol and I tried to film it, but my hands were quite shaky from the cold. When we started taking photos I put my bag and snack on the ground. I turned around a couple minutes later to find that a dog had appeared and taken one of my hard boiled eggs. The dog continued to follow us after it stole my lunch. The sun was setting by the time we finished wandering around and taking photos and the lighting was so beautiful, especially with the mountains on the horizon.

Great photo to represent how much we liked the station:

I walked down the tracks a bit and found a little rock message someone had made. We walked back out to the main road and the dog continued to follow us. When we got to the bus stop we tried to tell it to go home, but it didn't seem to want to leave. I jokingly told the dog to sit in Korean and it actually did. It looked like it wanted a treat after it did that and I felt bad because I didn't have any. The bus eventually arrived and we got on, leaving the poor dog behind (hopefully it made its way back home after we left).

We decided to go to Yoojung Sikdang for dinner again so we took the subway to Gangnam. One of the buildings near Sinsa had an awesome Christmas light display.

We passed BTS' old dorm on the way from Sinsa to Yoojung Sikdang. I had walked by it a couple times before today and even lived around the corner from it for a week without even realizing... oops!

When we arrived at the restaurant it looked super busy so we were going to go to a cafe for half an hour or so. As we were leaving the owner walked out and Ella started talking to her. She told Ella that they were closing soon so we turned back around and went inside to eat. The ajumma who runs the restaurant is very kind and I think she was excited to see that Ella could speak Korean.

The food here is super yummy and it's so fun to look at all the items and messages that fans have left. Many people had left by the time we finished eating so we took some quick pictures at the seats where BTS used to eat (there are cute little stickers at their spot).

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 22, 2018)