Korea Travelogue: Day 2 - Myeongdong Cathedral,Bukchon Hanok Village, Jump! and Cheonggyecheon
Day 2 itinerary
Myeongdong Cathedral
Paris Baguette (Breakfast)
Lotte Department Store (Main Branch)
Korean Lunch at Bukchon
Bukchon Hanok Village
Jump! Show
Cheonggyecheon Stream
Bulgogi and samgyupsal BBQ (Dinner)
Dongdaemun Market
Day 2 고고고! Check out Day 1 if you haven't!
All of us felt very refreshed after a good night's sleep :)
...and I overslept for Sunday mass because I was too exhausted. Le sigh.
But we decided to just go and take a look at Myeongdong Cathedral since it's so near to us and also because I wanted to visit the church.
With the new banana & toffee nut milk we bought the night before. Tastes bad! :(
It was still drizzling and freezing cold. Erratic weather please go away!
We walked down from our guesthouse to Paris Baguette just right outside one of the exits of Myeongdong Station on our side of the road for breakfast.
Good morning sunshine! :)
4 of us excluding Qiu ordered these to share. Qiu only had the bun at the back there haha. Drinks belonging to Juyin, Lirong & myself.
Their cups are so adorable! The SG outlet doesn't have such cute beverage cups.
Behind the scenes HAHAH look at Qiu's sian face.
Had breakfast and thankfully the rain stopped but it was still cloudy and gloomy all around.
Was quite worried the weather might dampen our plans.
Took the underground station to get to Myeongdong Cathedral.
So many idol posters!! :D
OPPASSSSSSSS!
For bff! YOUR HOAEGI! :D
Directions
We walked back to the Yoogane we had dinner the previous night. Just remember to find the Twosome+ Coffee with a Olive Young below it and you should be on the right path. Walk up the hill. You should see the cathedral on your right.
Alternatively, check out the directions here. We used these directions but we kinda got lost. I figured the only place the cathedral could be was up the hill near to where we were eating at Yoogane so that's where we headed upon exiting from Exit 8. And then we got sidetracked by all the life sized cut-outs. ROFL. Fangirls, sheesh.
I love you Geun Suk oppa!
GD for The Saem
Beast for Dunkin Donuts. K-idols are everywhere in Korea!
Asia Prince Jang Geun Suk! Please do a drama soon oppa!
Here's the Olive Young and Twosome+ Coffee I was talking about
Ta-dahhhh Myeongdong Cathedral (명동성당)
The cathedral offers English mass on Sundays at 9am and I wanted to attend it, even planned it into our day's schedule but alas I was really exhausted.
You can check out the schedule for Mass for Foreigners here.
We walked around the church's ground and I paid some love offerings to light a candle at our Lady's statue.
Mission accomplished then it was time to head down the hill to go to Lotte Department Store near Euljiro 1-ga Station.
My, what a tall tower of potato HAHA
Then.... we got sidetracked by food. #fatdieus
The potato was soooooo yummy! I cannot really remember the price for it but we all shared 1 to save space for other food.
Walked to Lotte to finally get my hands on the MCM backpack I wanted to get 1.5 years ago.
YAY MEEEEEE :D
Directions
Take the metro to Euljiro 1-ga and look for the Lotte Department Store exit! Pretty easy to spot because it looks quite atas HAHAH.
Went all the way to the 10th floor for the duty free section.
The floors below serve as a usual department store so locals can actually buy from there but foreigners can claim VAT refund.
There's even a foodcourt at B1 for you to try their local food.
The duty free on Levels 9-10 is meant for foreigners like us.
Everything there is charged in USD so do take note!
Decided pretty quickly the bag I wanted and paid for it.
Was told to come back in 15 mins as they had to go and take out my bag from the storeroom.
Went to the toilet to transfer all my stuff from the old bag into the new MCM one and then dumped it in Lotte lol.
The girls were all taking pictures of me abandoning my bag for the new one.
旧的不去新的不来嘛！Correct? Haha.
Anyways, I paid approximately USD$417 after my 5% discount coupon that I had printed.
My credit card bill came up to around $540 for it in SGD :(
So if possible, try and pay in USD cash la. If not quite bo hua.
Next it was time to start the day! Yes, only then did we really start our day's official itinerary LOL.
Wanted to buy my bag the day before but it was already closed by the time we finished dinner plus it was raining very heavily hence we decided to just go back on Sunday.
Discovered Lotte's Star Avenue by accident after taking the lift down and we camwhored for a good 15 minutes there HAHAHAHHA.
It's quite similar to the one I saw at Lotte World on my last trip which had displays like this:
But the one at the department store was just a small area with the handprints of the artistes that endorse Lotte.
Took the metro to get to Bukchon Hanok Village!
Before that, please remember to get your T-money from the convenience store.
T-money is basically Korea's version of Singapore's ezlink card but it can come in other forms like the Rilakkuma bear Lirong and I are holding on to.
Don't worry, you can choose to pay more to get these cute T-money or just stick to the usual card forms.
Qiu and Kee bought the card ones for 2,500 KRW while Juyin and Lirong bought the Rilakkuma ones at 8,000 KRW.
And then...... we got lost.
Korea's metro lines are so complicated I don't even... OTL
Plus I didn't have the map downloaded on my phone yet so it was horrible trying to navigate (I did download an app afterwards though. Will share it in another post!)
And this really nice Korean uncle saw us looking very blur and offered to send us to Anguk Station which is where we had to alight to get to Bukchon.
He could speak English too and quite fluently I might add.
It was really kind of him to send us all the way there and show us the directions to Bukchon so thank you ahjussi! :)
Directions
Getting to Bukchon Hanok Village (북촌한옥마을) is quite easy. Alight at Anguk Station and take Exit 2. You should be able to see the village houses after walking straight.
Alternatively, you can do what we did and take Exit 6 like the ahjussi told us. Walk straight towards Insadong and when you reach a traffic light junction, cross the road and you will see this uphill area. There should a school at this entrance. Walk all the way up till you reach the stone stair road and climb up the stairs. There's no designated area to decide where the entire village ends but from the architecture of the house you'll know.
And if you really really really really get lost (like us!), find a tourist guide :D
I noticed that they're all around tourists spots and dressed in all red with a 'i' sign. They can speak English or Chinese or Japanese and even provide maps for free! That was how we managed to get to the village in the first place cos we just got lost D:
Korean food!
잘 먹겠습니다~
Yummy meal to fill our tummies before climbing up the hills to Bukchon.
Look out for this restaurant behind me to find the stone stair road
Mini photoshoot here LOL
I pity the residents who actually live here.
Imagine so many tourists and locals alike coming to your house to take pictures.
I'd be quite insecure and unhappy about it actually.
Thank you kind Koreans who let us take pictures outside your house!
They are really very pretty so don't tear them down please HAHA.
After that we decided to leave and head to Jongno 3-ga station for our Jump! show.
Bought the 40,000 KRW tickets before we left for Korea. You can purchase it at the Interpark website.
Directions
Take the metro to Jongno 3-ga Station and exit at Exit 14. Walk to the end of the road where you can see Uniqlo opposite and turn right. Walk straight and you'll find the Jump theatre.
The show was nice! Although I was too sleepy to fully enjoy it.
I kept dozing off because the lighting was so dim HAHAHA but I did like it overall.
Next time I will go and watch Nanta! to compare which is better lol.
No pictures during the show because photography is not allowed.
Show lasted around 80 minutes.
Cast will have a mini autograph session after the show
All the guys got 6 pack one O.O
Met my friend Hyunjoo after that!
She came to find us at the Jump! theatre.
We went to Cheonggyecheon (청계천) after that before heading to dinner.
Cheonggyecheon Stream is basically the Korean government's efforts to restore a watercourse into a nature pathway for their citizens to basically relax and exercise. It's very long, passing through areas like Insadong, Myeongdong, Dongdaemun etc but we didn't walk that far. Just enough to take pictures hehe.
You can find out more about Cheonggyecheon Stream here.
I kept telling the girls this is a really pretty 'longkang' when we were in Singapore LOL cos they didn't know what Cheonggyecheon was.
Dinner was at this restaurant which Hyunjoo recommended because I was craving samgyupsal or pork belly.
Everytime I head to Korea I will always ask her to bring me to eat samgyupsal because it's so expensive in Singapore :(
I cannot recall how we got there because my friend brought us there but you can google the name I suppose and find out the address.
It's a chain store I think so should be aplenty all around Seoul/Korea.
Ordered 3 portions of the samgyupsal
Their famous dish is actually their bulgogi (1st item on the menu)
... and 3 portions of the bulgogi
Charcoal BBQ-ed food tastes better!
My friend Hyunjoo!
Ahhhhhh 오랜만이에요친구야~ /waves/
It was a yummy meal!
Thanks girls for treating Hyunjoo dinner hahaha :D
We headed to Cafe Pascucci for coffee afterwards to talk some more before going to Dongdaemun for late night shopping.
I don't have any pictures from our shopping at Dongdaemun because we were all mad tired after being lost for close to 2 hours.
For some strange reason we couldn't find all the supposed nice and cheap shopping areas!
And we even went to like this 2 buildings (Pyeonghwa Market and something that looks like it as well) full of clothes that only my grandmother would wear but no young adult fashion at all.
Gave up and went to Hello apm instead to buy clothes even though they weren't considered very cheap.
SIAN TTM -.-"
I did manage to buy some stuff though (shoes from the underground mall and clothes from Hello apm) and we all went back at close to 3am after shopping lol.
Cab driver was really nice to let all 5 of us squeeze in and charged us 20,000 KRW for the ride (non-meter fare) but we were okay with the pricing.
Knocked out at almost 4 plus in the morning.
Le sigh. If anyone has been to Dongdaemun Market and found places with good shopping please let me know!
I've tried on the previous trip to find the so called shopping area but we could only find places like Hello apm, doota! and Migliore which is not that cheap in my opinion.
So yeah, if you can remember how to get to nice shopping areas in Dongdaemun do share! :)
End of Day 2!
끝.
Update: Day 3, Day 4 is up! Go read if you haven't thanks! :)