Mother’s Day! We had a lot of activities on our list today, and we wanted to use up the rest of our time on our Seoul Pass, so we headed over to Jongro Tower to visit the largest Starbucks with plans to visit the Gyeongbokgung Palace afterwards and finish up our pass.
We headed over to Gyeongbokgung Palace after enjoying our teas at Starbucks and it was a really nice day. At the palace, 2 Korean school girls who were doing volunteer work (as a part of them getting into a good high school they explained) gave us a free 1 hour history tour of the place. They have to get 60 volunteer hours. We agreed and they did a good job speaking English and telling us history we wouldn’t know in our own. Also, one of the girls likes our fave Kpop group NCT too (her fave is Mark).
We also went to the Korean Folk museum which is on the edge of the property, then went over to Bukchon Hanok village, stopping first to try another ‘ade’. I had passion fruit this time. This area is very crowded, but worth a 1 time visit to see the lovely wooden homes. There are alot of volunteers along the way holding signs to be quiet as it is a residential area too.
We then went over to the Cheonggyecheon river to see the lanterns that were hung for Buddha’s birthday celebration. Then we went into the K-Style hub tourist building. We expected a bit more, but nobody really led us around the exhibits and didn’t seem to speak English very well so it made it a bit awkward. We did do a quiz to find out what tea type suits us, mine is Peppermint or Licorice. We also did some VR games and took pics with Big Bang members.
Last part of our Sunday we went to Lotte World Tower which is the 5th largest building in the world and took the elevator to the observation deck, It takes about 20 seconds. You can get discounts with your Seoul card, having a mastercard or buying online. (The normal price is around 25,000 won) Once there, you can go on about 3 different floors for the views, there are some cafes and shops up there. We then went into Lotte World Mall and shopped around and had some dinner. There is 11+ floors and a billion food options. Dree treated since it was Mothers Day. We got Samgyetang (which is a ginger chicken soup) and Chicken Porridge and beer. It was pretty good. We thought about going to a movie and looked at the options, and could not believe all the food options you have at the theater’s here! We decided in the end we were too tired and would probably fall asleep, as the movies were 18,000 won and we’d just head home after a tiring but fun day.
