Two weekends ago I gave Seoul another chance. This time we left on Friday night and arrived at about 1am. Our first stop was Dongdaemun for the night market. Julie wanted to get a new coat and I was contemplating the same. 3 hours later I walked out with a new pea coat which I was able to haggle the price down 40,000 won. At 4am we decided we should probably sleep because Julie had an interview the next morning. We found a wicked sketchy love motel with rooms for 25,000 won each. I've seen closets bigger than the rooms we had and college dorm rooms that were much cleaner. The room rivals the Sea Pine Motor Inn from the Sonic or Bust road trip.
In the A.M. Julie left for her interview and the rest of us set off to find a hostel of better quality to stay for Saturday night. We chose Hongdae, the neighborhood where Hongik University is. Aka the same hostel that I stayed in last time. Too bad that there was only 1 bed available. We parked it at Starbucks and searched online for another hostel close by and waited for Julie to come back. The hostel we ended up staying at was called Stay Korea. It wasn't far from where we already were and the price was really reasonable. 20,000 won per person.
For lunch we got some Italian and cupcakes then went to Dr. Fish. Julie and April wanted to try the fish pedicure. The cafe was out of control. I never would've expected a coffee shop with prices like that being so crowded. Korea never fails to amaze me. Dinner was Mexican in Itaewon (stuffing western food down our throats is a common theme when going to a bigger city). Paper Planes came on on the restaurant's radio and at least 1 person from every table started doing the guns hand motions. When we were going up to pay (the song was still on and I was shooting) some girl shouted "HEY YOU" and we had a 241 style shoot out. God bless America.
After dinner we went back to Hongdae because our hostel gives us free admission to a party with free beer. By the time we got there, there was only about a half hour of beer left so we went on in search of a bar that we heard sold drinks out of plastic bags. We walked just about every inch of Hongdae but we found the bar. 5,000 won ($4.30) for a plastic bag cocktail is alright with me. We stayed at Vinyl (the bar) for a bit then decided to explore. The street art in Hongdae is awesome. We took a ton of pictures with the various paintings on walls.
While chilling in a little park listening to some people play guitar I bought 2 big bottles of makkoli (Korean rice wine) off of some guy's cart for 5,000 won. The next hour was spent walking up to random Koreans and pouring them a cup of makkoli. I made a lot of friends that night. My favorite was when we made a pit stop at Burger King. I offered some makkoli to a couple that had no extra cup. The girl started yelling at her boyfriend to chug their jumbo orange soda so that they could use the cup for makkoli. After I filled their cup we had a brief discussion about Obama and I left them to their french fries. But not before they both shouted "I LOVE USA!".
On sunday morning we ventured back to Itaewon for some western breakfast. All of us ordered a different dish and we just shared them. Our feast was eggs benedict, french toast, eggs and bacon, and cherry crepes. It was expensive but good. From there we went to Insa-dong to check out the arty neighborhood in Seoul. Insa-dong reminded me a lot of NYC. After an hour or so there we were wicked tired and decided to catch a train home.
Julie and I had THE WORST seats on the train. We had the first seats in our car. Every time someone entered or left the car this loud sliding door would open and close waking us up and blowing cold air in. Dealing with that for 5 hours was NOT fun. In all, this trip to Seoul was definitely a success. No playing catch up, no spending hours alone on the subway. We spent hours on the subway, but together. In all reality, any weekend with plastic bag cocktails can't be that bad at all.
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