We started off a 2-week whirlwind tour outside of Japan with a nice red-eye into Seoul. It turns out that while conceptually we can understand we will be very tired when arriving into a new country around 3am and not planning to sleep for a while, it’s another thing to actually do it… Our first day we were basically zombies walking around a very gray city while waiting to check-in at our Airbnb. Since it was 6am and we weren’t going to be sleeping for a while, we decided to treat ourselves to some caffeine at a familiar location – Starbucks. I say it’s familiar not only because of the US brand we ultimately chose for our fix, but because over the course of our time in Seoul we easily walked by 100s of Starbucks… apparently it’s a well known chaebol situation, so it is not all too surprising.

Brand hunting aside, we did manage to ambulate to the World Cup Park near the stadium built for the 2002 World Cup in Korea. This is a super cool park that was literally built on top of a landfill – even walking around you’re constantly reminded of it’s history due to the methane control system reminding you not to smoke near pipes full of flammable gasses built up in the remaining trash under the park… The history of the park was super interesting and it was a nice place to take a cute picture before walking along the Han river which bisects Seoul and seeing some wonderful navy ships. Like I said – weird day… For the rest of this strange touristic start to our Korean adventure, we mostly wandered around Hongdae street (a well known tourist trap area, but still filled with great food choices) before ultimately retreating to our Airbnb for an early night. The view from the apartment was pretty deluxe – I don’t really remember it all that much given how tired we were, so it’s nice to take a look at it again in the photos below!

Our next day, we were quite rested and ready to travel around the city – first stop, palaces. Before we even got into the subway to head out there though, we made the amazing discovery that I had booked our place very close to an NFT Gallery – we didn’t go in on principle (I can’t think of a stupider activity to do on vacation…), but it was definitely a unique start to the day. From there we headed to both Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, two palaces (of many apparently) in central Seoul. The first statue we saw was of a very strange kids game that apparently transcends cultures, the grounds of the palace were quite a delight to wander around. These palaces cover almost a thousand years of Korean history and painstakingly detail the Japanese atrocities committed at each location, during each century… Still a little bad blood it seems.

Probably the most enjoyable part of the day however was that we had the opportunity to dine with JangKyum and JongUk – two ex-coworkers who I spent quite a bit of time with in the last few years. Thankfully they were able to break away from their very demanding jobs for a night and spend a few hours with us enjoying some fantastic Korean BBQ and more soju bombs than we probably should have – thanks guys!

Our final full day in Seoul, we decided to finally get some actual physical activity by hiking up Namsan Hill in the city center. Hiking may be a bit strong of a term for what we actually did to summit the ~300m to the radio tower… it’s just stairs. Straight stairs for nearly 1000 vertical feet. Ouch. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic panoramic view of Seoul conveniently co-located with a 5-story mall much like most of the other attractions we had been to in the last few days. We saw that this is where couples like to put a lock on the fence around the tower, but either we were too tired or too unsure if this marriage will last after 12 years together to do the same…

As we criss-crossed Seoul and exited Namsan Hill on the opposite side, we decided that we would continue a tradition for all our future cities traveled, and check out a board game cafe. We stopped at Elves & Espresso for some caffeine and a round of a cool game where you are drawing an adventurers map based on randomly drawn tetris pieces – overall A+ setup, and we definitely would come here often were we to live in Seoul… After a game session, the only natural thing to do is visit the Korean War Memorial for a sobering look into the violent history to win freedom from perpetual colonialization for South Korea post-WWII. This was quite a powerful museum exploring not just the Korean War, but all warfare in Korean history and it was amazing to see children here on a Sunday with what I assumed were their teachers going through the various exhibits. Highly recommend that anyone passing through Seoul stop here for a very powerful reminder of what South Korean independence cost.

We also ate lots of delicious food, some amazing baked goods and a phenomenal dinner at Thedam with Prof. HyunJae Kim (group picture unfortunately forgotten after all the great Hwayo soju he had us try!), but it’s better that we don’t list every spot we went to… let’s just say I need to try and work off at least a few pounds worth of Korean fried chicken before we get back to the US…