We stayed a total of 7 days in Seoul and my previous post covered the first 3 days. We enjoyed lovely blue skies and springtime temps, enhanced of course by the blocking trees every where we looked, for the first four days. Then winter arrived. LOL Well, I guess it was typical spring weather in that the rain, wind and cool temps blew in, but we weren’t loving it! But first, the last couple of warm days.

We returned from our DMZ tour in the early afternoon, hungry, tired and pensive. We needed to find a place to eat and stumbled upon a local spot before heading out into the Myeong-dong district, a shopping area packed with shops containing everything you could imagine, mostly in miniature form. It is always nice to see which girl gravitates to which store.

From there we made our way all.the.way across the city (in traffic!) to see a giant Dunkin Donuts (Olivia’s current obsession). We were rewarded with a beautiful view as we searched for the bus stop on the way there. And the treats were wonderful! By then, we were all exhausted from our long day and ready for bed.

The next day, after school in the morning, the girls and I headed out to track down a few spots from K-Pop Demon Hunters (Luisa’s current obsession). We took the train over the bridge with some beautiful views to Lotte World Tower, the sixth tallest building in the world.

We went up, up, up and the views were incredible! I love seeing everything in miniature. When we exited the elevator (at floor 117) into an auditorium that played a video before opening to reveal the view. It was pretty cool! We wandered around, slowly making our way up to floor 123 (499 m; 1,637 ft) where we then took the elevator back down.

Then we hoped on the train (public transportation is very easy, clean and cheap in Seoul) and headed over to the Jamsil Olympic Stadium. You cannot go in, but Luisa wanted to see the outside because of the movie. Right next door is a baseball stadium which happened to be filling up for game, which was fun to see. From there we walked to the Starfield Coex Mall, famous for its library (so beautiful!) and a giant bronze statue of PSY’s hands in the pose of the dance (“Gangnam Style“). We also enjoyed wandering the mall and even found a Jamba Juice!!

The next day was Thursday, and we woke up to winter. After school we went on a hop on hop off bus tour with a BTS theme with high hopes. Unfortunately, the hopes were quickly dashed. Due to the rain we couldn’t see anything, and the tour was not at all informative. They just played the same few songs and announced the names of the stops. No mention of the cultural or historical significance of any place and no tie in with BTS whatsoever. Due to it being late in the day, we couldn’t get off at any stops because we were on the last bus of the day. Also, did I mention it was pouring rain and cold? So we didn’t really want to get off anyways! It was a bust!

I did see this on my Instagram from a fellow traveling family also in Seoul at the time, which I thought was interesting.

After that, we did something very fun. We surprised our friends from Melbourne!! Well, the wife and kids. We had met up with the husband while we were in Sydney and realized that we had about 36 hours of overlap in Seoul, so we started plotting. He kept it a secret from his family, so we surprised them in their hotel lobby Thursday evening. Very fun! From their hotel we walked through the rain to the Myeongdong Night Market. We sampled several different stalls, having fun trying bites of this and that while trying to remain somewhat dry. And, of course, we snuck into a shop or two along the way. We ended the evening in the warmth of the Starbucks where we could catch up a bit better.

The next day we had a whole day planned with our friends. We were all very excited. We started the day in Bukchon Hanok Village where we walked the streets admiring the traditional houses. We had lunch, explored the Insa-dong neighborhood, and then headed across the river to the Garosu-gil neighborhood. There we had something fun planned–a K-Pop dance class! I found it through Airbnb experiences, and the teacher was fabulous. All 10 of us participated, and I have to say it was much more of a workout than expected. You have to be flexible and have some stamina to make it through a 1.5hr class. 🙂 From there we went back to the mall with the beautiful library for some shopping and dinner before ending the day at Karaoke (fun but oh, so loud with 10 people in a very small room). What a wonderful way to spend our last day in Seoul! We are so grateful to our friends for adjusting their plans so we could spend the day together. It was very nice!

We took a (very very long) direct flight from Seoul to Rome the following day. But we had a nice goodbye from these cute little fellows and got to witness the tail end of a traditional dance.

And then, just like that, our time exploring Asia came to an end. Before this trip, only Steffen had been to Asia (Hong Kong and China), and now we all have spent almost 5 months exploring 8 different countries. What a privilege to get to experience such diverse cultures and landscapes in a new part of the world! It left us all wanting to come back for more!