Exploring Seoul!
Now that teaching is becoming more familiar and more of a routine, it leaves us to start enjoying the time that we get to explore Seoul! Before coming to Korea, my sister told John and me how big Seoul was, but being from small towns my whole life, it was one of those things that I could not grasp until coming here and seeing it for myself! Seoul is huge!
We are technically in Bundang, as you can see from the map above, and though Bundang is considered a separate city from Seoul, it is seamlessly connected!
The subway map shows how Bundang (the yellow line) is linked and connected to all of Seoul. It is small but I marked the subway station which is closest to our apartment!
Because Seoul is such a big city, it is hard to find a good starting point when it comes to exploring. The best thing to do is to get the subway map and pick places to go (with some research)!
Last week, John, Beeta and I visited the Noryangjin Fish Market, so I’ll start this post by sharing some pictures from that. The fish market was definitely an experience!
This past week, we started exploring with a trip to Itaewon. Itaewon is a multicultural district and very popular with foreigners! It is a good place for shopping, dining and night life. A lot of countries have their embassies located here so its very foreign friendly. It was fun to walk the streets, see the shops, and have some amazing Korean BBQ!
I didn’t get too many pictures of Itaewon except for this cute dog waiting for his owner. Itaewon a very westernized area of Seoul, as you can see with Subway and Outback Steakhouse! We will definitely be back so I hope to get more pictures soon!
Next we visited a park along the Hangang River, called Yeouido Hangang Park. This park borders the river and the city, so the setting is very pretty! It was filled with couples and families. People can ride bikes here, cook, listen to music, and camp out.
Children love anything water related!
Museums in Korea are wonderful to visit because they are free (who doesn’t love free?!?) 🙂 We are making lists to visit as many as we can while here. This past weekend, we went to the King Sejong Museum. King Sejong is most widely known for creating Hangeul (the Korean Alphabet).
I thought these little models were so cute! They were telling the story of how King Sejong developed Hangeul.
A picture of Gwanghwamun Gate which leads into the Palace. I want to visit there soon!
The final thing that I will talk about was our Cat Cafe experience. I have heard of many different things that I must do while here in Seoul, and one of them was to visit a Cat Cafe. Cat Cafes are literally places where you go and order coffee/tea and you can play with cats. I have heard that they are big trends in Asia, especially in Japan and Korea. When you walk in, you are greeted with meows! It is a place you will either love or hate, depending how you feel about cats. I really liked it, but I am a HUGE animal lover!! A place like this probably wouldn’t do well in the USA with all the health standards we have, but its great to experience it here in Seoul!
I loved the Sphynx Cat!
Exploring makes everything worth while! Though the transition is getting easier here, it has had its rough moments, so it is nice knowing that after every work week that we have time to explore something new!
Till the next post! 😉
One Response to “Exploring Seoul!”
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