Day 14 : Seoul Tower, Markets

Started the day with a 5km loop around the neighbourhood - finishing exactly outside Oozy Coffee. Returned home with large coffees for Clare and Krissi.

The city was foggy and grey this morning. Romantic, you’d think. Turns out it’s just air quality at 152 AQI - classified as Unhealthy.

Spent the entire run listening to every podcast and radio show covering the Crows win from the night before. Worth the lung damage.

After breakfast we walked 2km to pick up Krissi’s new glasses and stumbled into what turned out to be a city-wide street market situation. One street was all flowers and plants, the next vegetables, the next clothing. It went for kilometres in every direction. We bought very little and walked a lot.

Caught a bus back and rounded up the kids for Insa-dong - Seoul’s tourist market district. Hours of wandering, minimal spending, considerable caffeine. The highlight was stopping at a caricature shop and commissioning a portrait of our dog Jerry. It is, objectively, the best purchase of the entire trip.

Linked up with Ben, who had been record shopping (naturally), and caught the train to Seoul Tower. Took a packed bus up the hill and joined approximately every other tourist in the city at the top. The view was largely cloud. Still good.

We skipped the bus queue back down and walked 2km through the hillside gardens instead - more picturesque, significantly more stairs. The kids’ legs gave out somewhere around the National Theatre of Korea, which is also where we found a family of cats sitting in a tree.

Krissi and I went out for dinner - big hot pot chicken and noodle in a spicy broth. We ordered mild. They have a different idea of mild. Then a beer at a very cool little bar to plan the final day.

On the walk home Krissi raised the question of where we should go next. It’s our last night in Korea. I feel like this could have waited.

Europe, obviously.Read more