Asia Trip 2023 Day 8 - We’re Almost There
We’ve traveled enough to understand that the first day in any city has its own unique set of challenges and today in Seoul was no different. We opted not to go with a tour today and instead wanted to experience Seoul on our own. It's a modern safe city, it seemed like an easy one to navigate without a guide. And that was true, but it took us about an hour or so to get our bearings, learn the right applications on our phone to use, and understand how to get around. Eventually, we had gotten our Starbucks and got in a taxi to take us to our first stop today, Gyeongbokgung Palace.
Traffic seems to be a problem in Seoul but eventually, we made it a few blocks from the palace where our taxi let us out and we walked the rest of the way. We arrived a little after 10 AM to catch the tail end of a ceremony before buying our tickets and walking the grounds. Walking the Gyeongbokgung Palace on our own was daunting. It is a massive facility that was rebuilt after the Japanese occupation and was absolutely stunning. We spent over an hour walking the grounds and seeing the various buildings and dwellings that make up the palace. Without a guide, it was a lot to take in but we did our best reading as much as we could and learning about the history of this magnificent structure.
We left the palace and began walking toward Bukchon Hanok Village around a twenty-minute walk. There isn’t really a “there” when you arrive at the village but it's a general area that is made up of traditional Korean architecture. It is a very popular area and once you start walking through it you can see why, the village is incredibly photogenic and you get a brief sense of what Seoul looked like many years ago. The downside is much of the village is set on a hill which makes walking around a bit of a challenge.
From this beautiful village, we stopped briefly at a Starbucks to grab some water before heading to Changdeokgung. This was yet another palace that’s situated in central Seoul that was stunning. Once again though without a guide, the nuances between this and Gyeongbokgung outside of the obvious were a bit lost on us. We once again did our best to educate ourselves on it but the moral of today’s early story was that we regretted not getting a guide to take us around the beautiful Seoul spots.
At this point, it was early afternoon and we were starting to get hungry and tired having not eaten anything the entire day. We grabbed a cab and went to the entrance of Namsan Park, the largest park in Seoul. We love city parks and this was supposed to be a spectacular one with Seoul Tower towering over it. We didn’t do any research ahead of time so assumed that we could walk our way to the tower. Little did we know that 45 minutes of straight uphill trekking was what awaited us to get to the entrance of Seoul Tower. Later we learned had we gone to a different park entrance we could have taken a gondola up. But we burned some calories and Jenn pushed harder than I’ve ever seen her do only stopping briefly on the massive hike up. Arriving at the Seoul Tower was quite the triumphant moment and we treated ourselves to some water and a beautiful Seoul mug at the Starbucks on the first floor of the tower. We decided against going up the tower and instead had a quick hot dog at a nearby stall, bought some small toys for our nieces and nephews from a very cool toy machine, and then made a very similar walk back down and out of the park to a taxi to take us back to our hotel. It wasn’t easy but it was absolutely worth it.
Around thirty minutes later we found an exit to the park and called for an Uber to take us back to the JW Marriott where we quickly took showers and got ready for tonight's dinner. Little did we know that traffic in Seoul continues to be a problem and what should have been a ten-minute drive ended up taking us almost an hour. We did finally arrive very late to our reservation at Jungsik a two Michelin star restaurant in Seoul that also has a restaurant in New York near where I used to work at Citi.
We sat down and ordered two glasses of champagne and started off with a beautiful array of small bites that were out of this world. You can tell a lot by those first few bites and what we found out is we were in for a tremendous evening. From there we had caviar, an octopus soup, branzino, and a choice of lamb and hanwoo (Korean steak). Jenn went with the hanwoo and I had the lamb and either way you were in for a great main course. The desserts were just as good as the main offerings with a beautifully crafted carrot cake (in the form of a carrot) and a stunning cinnamon cake with ice cream that I could have had a few more of. It was such a spectacular meal and evening. We had such a great time that we are now thinking of when we are going to visit the New York restaurant.
We finished off the night with a lovely walk in what is a bustling area of Seoul. The restaurants were packed, and everyone was walking enjoying the summer evening. When we got tired we called an Uber to take us back to our hotel where we watched an episode of Seinfeld and went to bed for a very early morning tour tomorrow.
