Korea Day 7: Seoul Wrapup

On our last full day in Seoul, we were quite exhausted from our ambitious day trip to Busan the day before so we planned a low-key day that included sleeping in late. Highlights included dim sum brunch at Din Tau Fung in Myeongdong, a visit to the Changdeokgung Palace, and some wandering through Insadong and Myeongdong.

Dim Sum at Din Tau Fung

After a long day trip across the country to Busan the previous day, we intentionally decided to sleep in. Our goals for the day were mostly to wrap up our Seoul experience. On the recommendation of a friend, we decided to get brunch at Din Tau Fung, near our hotel in Myeongdong.

It was a good thing we were hungry as the set lunch for 2 was huge – there were more courses than pictured above! They kept bringing plates out! All in all, the food was very tasty and it was a great experience.

Changdeokgung Palace

The Changdeokgung Palace is a world heritage site that is well worth a visit. Constructed in the 15th century, this complex is an excellent example of far east palace architecture and uses the topography of area as inspiration for the layout and design. Built as a secondary palace to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, it is a bit smaller, but still well worth seeing. In particular, the location next to a mountain range inspired the design of the secret garden, which became an inspiration for other garden designs throughout Korea.

The Secret Garden of the Changdeokgung Palace is one of the highlights, but we realized a bit late that a guided tour was necessary, and it was sold out. Book early if you want to take this tour, as one week ahead of time was not enough for us to be able to secure tickets. There are both English and Korean tours. Fortunately, it is still possible to tour the rest of the grounds without a tour, so we purchased a basic ticket instead.

It was a pleasant wander and we were glad we didn’t skip this site, even though we were unable to tour the Secret Garden.

Tteok and Kitchen Utensil Museum

We then started wandering towards Insadong. The Tteok and Kitchen Utensil Museum was a museum that Jennifer had seen in the guidebook and was interested in visiting, so when James and I walked by it, we decided to go in.

A Tteok is a special kind of Korean rice cake and is used in many celebrations and ceremonies. It was interesting to see the different types of rice cakes that represented different milestones in a person’s life (e.g. “Academic Achievement Celebration” or “Coming of Age Ceremony.”)

Insadong and Myeongdong

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent wandering through Insadong and Myeongdong.

It was fun to simply enjoy the atmosphere of the city on our last day in this wonderful country!

Day 8: Heading Home

We enjoyed the evening, packed up, and woke bright and early (5am?) to catch our flight back to Boston!

We took a cab to the Seoul Airport Express train station. One pleasant surprise – it’s apparently possible to check in for the flight – including luggage dropoff – in some cases at the train station. If you’re interested, check the cutoff times; we just barely made the time by 10 minutes, but it was a convenience to arrive at the airport with our boarding pass in hand and our luggage already handled. The airport train was clean, fast, had assigned seats, and avoided traffic.

A second pleasant surprise was that apparently foreigners can get some of their hotel tax refunded. Our hotel gave us a form on checkout for the VAT refund, and we noticed a kiosk for it in the terminal, post-security. It wasn’t well-advertised, but I decided to give it a try – it was mostly a matter of scanning a QR code plus my passport, and it dispensed us KRW 110K ($85) in cash! We used some of it for breakfast, but found a currency exchange to convert the rest. Since our checkin was so quick, we had more time for breakfast than expected.