Busan to Seoul 🚆 + Cafe - Day 12

Our final city in our trip was Seoul! We woke up pretty early to catch our train from Busan to Seoul. The train recommends people get there a bit early, especially if you have big luggages as the only areas to store big luggages are the storage areas in between carts. Although we got there relatively early, we were too late to find luggage space. Yebin and Farheen had to go to a different cart to store their luggages. Maya and I stored ours right behind our cart but it was tucked right beside some seafood packages, which I assumed were being transported into Seoul! Maya was quite worried about anything spilling into our luggages and having them smell like seafood 😂 Jen couldn’t even put her luggage into a storage section and the worker just told her to store it off the side, near the door. We got to our seats, and we were off to Seoul! 🚅 It was a pretty relaxing ride and I fell asleep for a bit! Jen and Farheen were also doing a school assignment on the train ride haha! 😆 We got to Seoul in a few hours! We were planning our route to the hotel in the quickest way possible because Jen, Maya and Yebin had a scheduled Colour Palate appointment where a professional will tell you what colours complement your skin tone, in terms of clothes, makeup, hair colour etc! As we were getting our luggages off, Jen, Maya and I were struggling on how to get off the train with our huge luggages. Luckily as we were about to get off, the guys who loaded those seafood packages came to unload them. They saw us struggling and generously helped us lift our luggages off the train! 😂 We took the subway to the station closest to our hotel, in Myeongdong! We walked for a good 10 mins to our hotel and checked in. Weirdly Yebin, Jen and Farheen’s room wasn’t ready until 6pm but Maya and I could check into our room (it was around 1pm then). The other 3 girls left their luggages in our room and quickly left to their appointment in Gangnam.
Farheen and I had a few hours to kill on our own! We decided to walk around our hotel to see if there were any cute cafes nearby!We realized how big cafe culture was in Seoul! There’s literally a cafe every block so we had no shortage of choices! ☕️ We decided on a really minimalist aesthetic one called Luft! It was a little later in the day so many of their items were already sold out, but we managed to grab a few treats we were interested in! We also got two drinks! I got a Rose milk tea and Farheen got a Lavender cream latte! They were so good! 😋 And the sweets were also quite delish as we didn’t really eat lunch that day!
When we left, we decided to explore the well known Myeongdong shopping area! This area was so lively and bustling with people! It’s a well known tourist spot as there are many stores selling skincare, makeup or clothes! 🛍️ Farheen also wanted to check out the big Nike store since they have this feature where you can customize an item for a price! She decided not to get one but it was really cool regardless! 😊
Myeongdong is also known for their street food vendors! There were SO MANY! And nearly all of them were packed with people! Farheen stopped to get a pomegranate juice at one of the stalls since it was quite a hot day! 🥤
One shop I was DYING to visit was Olive Young in Seoul! It’s almost like Sephora but they mostly sell korean makeup and skincare. The flagship Myeongdong store was sadly closed for construction so we went to another location nearby! Let me tell you, it was crazy busy full of people! 😂 Farheen and I were slightly overwhelmed but everything was so cheap! 🤑 The night before I had done a bit of research on TikTok as to what products were good to buy! We stocked up on a bunch of masks as souvenirs for people, we got some sunscreen, some pimple patches and we both got a Kahi stick for our moms to use! 💕 I also got a few nail gel stickers, gel cream and vitamin c serum! The total cost wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, less than 200,000 won (~$200 CAD) so I was satisfied with our haul! 🛍️
We walked around a bit more and found this cute ice cream shop that sold ice cream in shapes of roses! We got one that had 3 flavours: strawberry, matcha and chocolate! It was so pretty and so yummy in the hot weather! 🍦
We found a really cute shop that sold cheap jewelry and accessories! We looked in here a bit! Then we found another cheap souvenir shop! I got some soju key chains cause they were so cute! 🥰
There was also a really good food mart! I saw some snacks I wanted to pick up, but I decided to get it near the end of our trip so I just made a mental list of things to get later. I also found the alcohol section 😜 Let me tell you, it is no joke how cheap the soju is there! It’s only 2,000 won (~$2 CAD) which is SO CHEAP!!! Here it’s like $10 🥲 and they even had sparkling soju!! So cool!
We walked around the area a bit more before heading back to the hotel to meet up with the other girls!
We were all pretty tired so we decided to grab a quick dinner. Farheen went to a kbbq place she found in the Myeongdong shopping area earlier. The 4 of us decided to try Korean Domino’s pizza! We got a sweet potato pizza and a Bulgogi pizza! We also ordered a side of fried Mac & cheese balls! We ate in store as it wasn’t too busy and it’s not as sketchy as Domino’s stores here 😂 The Bulgogi pizza was definitely my favourite! The sweet potato was pretty good too, but more on the sweeter side. The Mac & Cheese balls were ok 😬
We decided to explore the Myeongdong shopping area after dinner and it was still so busy with people despite it being night! 😄 Jen wanted to drink a bit so I took them to the mart I found earlier with Farheen and we got some sparkling soju and a grape flavoured one. I also bought a few snacks this time too! 😆 We went back to Jen, Farheen and Yebin’s room and just drank and watched korean tv shows! It was such a fun day! 🥰Read more