133주 - Matt in Korea
My brother came to visit me! He was here during the first two weeks of October, when I had almost a week off work because of holidays.
Day 1
Matt's flight arrived around 4am, so I stayed overnight at the airport to meet him at the gate. We got coffee and donuts at the airport, then caught the first bus to my city. It's about a two-hour bus ride to my apartment, and he was so excited he was basically sitting on the edge of his seat the whole time. After dropping his things at his hotel room, we went to the Starbucks in town for coffee and breakfast sandwiches, then took a walk around town just to be out and about. We took naps in the afternoon, then met up again at a BBQ restaurant for dinner with a friend of mine. Afterwards, we played a few games of pool and darts at a pool hall and got bingsu for dessert.
We got a bit of an early start because the place we wanted to go for breakfast is about a 45-minute bus ride away. Pancake Pantry is worth it, though.
After breakfast we went to the pound where I've been volunteering. We had a big dog-walking event and a lot of people who had never volunteered with us before were coming to walk some dogs, so I was one of the regular volunteers in charge of the event and Matt helped out a lot by walking some of the big dogs and refilling water bowls. It's really fun to spend time with the dogs, but it's definitely exhausting, and you need to shower immediately afterwards.
We took the bus into town for dinner and drinks (chicken and beer!). We'd had a long day of dog-walking, so after a few beers we called it a night.
Another early start. We had a quick breakfast at a coffee shop and got right on the bus to head to Seoul. There's always something going on in the Gwanghwamun area, but today everything was going on. A long stretch of the main street was closed off to traffic for a street art festival, a performance art festival, and they were setting up a big stage in Gwanghwamun square for a kpop concert at night. Our first stop was Gyeongbok Palace - but not before stopping at a hanbok rental shop to get dressed up. The older Korean man at the front desk was so kind, and he seemed to have a genuinely good time helping Matt get his warrior's hanbok together. We spent the next two hours walking around the palace taking pictures of everything. Several people asked to take pictures with/of Matt, and he was even interviewed by some Korean students working on a school project.
After returning our hanbok, we got takeout burgers and fries to eat while sitting along the Cheonggye Stream. We walked around the area some more, watching a bit of the performance art and checking out the aftermath of the street art festival.
Not yet ready to end our day in Seoul, we walked over to the Jongno area and found a bar overlooking the busy streets to have a few beers and people-watch before finally catching the bus home.
Today was a rainy day, so we got a late start, had McBreakfast, and lounged around for a bit. We found a nice cafe to hang out in, and shopped around town for a few hours. We decided we wanted Mexican food for dinner, so we took the bus to Gangnam to have dinner there and do some more shopping (...mostly me.). After dinner, we grabbed some beers from a convenience store and spent the next few hours singing karaoke. After singing pretty much every song the karaoke machine had that we knew, we stopped in at an Irish pub for a few drinks before heading home.
We got another kind of late start today and, after talking about how good the food at Pancake Pantry was multiple times every day, went back again for brunch. It was SO good.
After brunch, we went back to Seoul, but this time to the Itaewon area. There's a cafe I really like that has a 6th floor rooftop overlooking the whole south side of the city, so we ordered coffees there and grabbed a rooftop table.
Matt wanted to see the view from Namsan Tower, and I'd never actually been up to the observatory before, so we took the cable car up to the tower to catch the sunset.
Part of the view from the observatory.
The observatory has a cafe, gift shops, and incredible views of the whole city, so we easily spent hours up there.
Afterwards, we took the cable car back down and walked around Myeongdong for a bit, tried some different street foods, then got the bus back to Itaewon. Itaewon is a party area, so we hit up a few bars and made it to our airbnb a little after 4am.
...This was a rough morning. I showered when we got to our room, so I didn't get to sleep until around 5am. We were supposed to check out by 11. We woke up at 10:50 - basically brushed our teeth, put our shoes on, and went out the door. We marched right over to the pancake house for a ginormous breakfast.
We decided over breakfast that we wanted to visit some of the touristy areas so Matt could get some souvenirs, so we went to Anguk. This area is famous for its village of traditional Korean houses, so there are many tourists and lots of shops with cool souvenirs. After another stop for coffee (pictured above: Matt with his Marshmallow Choco-latte, which he was super excited about), we shopped around and walked up to see the view from the top of the village.
Finished with our shopping, we took the subway towards the Han river and rented bikes. We biked along the river nearly from one side of the city to the other for about 3 hours, stopping along the way to take pictures. It's one of my favorite things to do in Seoul - the views from the riverfront are incredible.
We dropped the bikes back off near Lotte World Tower, rewarded ourselves with egg bread from a street stand, then basically got lost in Lotte World Mall looking for food. We eventually made it to California Pizza Kitchen, where we ate possibly the best Hawaiian Pizza on the planet. We were exhausted, and it was a loooong bus ride back home.
My school was back in session Thursday and Friday, and my coworkers really wanted to meet my brother, so he came with me to school today. We worked on lessons at my desk, and he came to my classes with me to talk to my students and play games with us. One of the games we played was a spelling game, so he and I walked around helping my students with spelling, and he was like, "I think I just realized I don't know how to spell." 😂
After school, my co-teacher and vice principal took us for a Korean-style dinner. We had spicy chicken stew, which I love, but there was SO MUCH food. My bosses then told me that instead of coming to school tomorrow, I should go have fun with my brother. They're the best.
We used my unexpected day off to go to Everland! Everland is part amusement park, part zoo, so we saw a bunch of animals and went on pretty much all the good (non-kiddie) rides. It was pretty crowded (the most crowded I've ever seen it) so we spent all day at the park.
We left around 9:30pm, went back to my house to get our bags (and so Matt could say goodbye to my cats), and went to our airbnb in Seoul.
We didn't arrive in Hongdae until after midnight. We dropped off our bags, changed clothes, and went out to the bars until nearly 6am.
Day 9We didn't start moving until like 1pm. Finally got out of the apartment, got coffee, and walked around the Hongdae shopping area a bit. We both bought some cute socks - Matt put on his Ronald McDonald ones right away.
After a really big Shabu Shabu dinner, we went back to Itaewon to meet my friend and walk around the Itaewon street food festival. There were a bunch of food stands lining the streets, and there were stages set up for performances. It was super crowded, so after walking around there we headed up the hill towards the bars. We saw a sign for a My Chemical Romance party that was happening at a bar up the street - I obviously needed to attend. We spent a few hours drinking and playing darts there before getting a taxi back to our airbnb. Matt's flight was early the next morning, so we only stayed out until 1am.
Day 10
We overslept a bit, so we got Matt to the airport but didn't even have time to grab breakfast together before his flight 😭
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