Gyedong

We got up bright and early for a busy day ahead! 😌 We had plans to head to Gyeongbokgung Palace and wear hanboks there! We were all pretty excited since we were planning to all dress up this time! 🥰
We decided to walk there since it was less than 30 mins away! On the way we decided to pop into a random cafe we saw! It was so cute! I got an Earl Grey latte and omg it was AMAZING! I think a lot of the girls agreed it was also quite good! I wish I could get it again 🥲 We arrived and went into the hanbok shop! They had a huge variety of hanboks of all different colours! We all chose our colours (I opted for a lavender one 💜) and the ladies kindly helped us into them. Wearing a hanbok is definitely a lot less work compared to a yukata! I remember the workers in Japan took almost 10 minutes just to get Farheen and I into the full outfit! Hanboks were all done within minutes! We also decided to get our hair done! 💁🏻‍♀️ It was so cute! We grabbed cute purses they offered us and put our valuables in them, and then we were off! If you wear a hanbok, entering the Gyeongbokgung Palace is free of charge. I think normally it’s $6 for entry! But a lot of people were also dressed up in hanboks or other Korean traditional clothing! It was such a cool sight to see! 🤩
We entered and took so many cute pics of each other! (Peep at some of them here!) Farheen and I also did a cute dance to BraveGirls’ Rollin’! It was fun!
After a few hours passed, we had to start heading back to the hanbok shop to return our hanboks. Once we changed back into our regular clothes, we were quite hungry! We walked a bit and Yebin suggested to get mandu soup (korean dumplings). Farheen went to a nearby shop for pizza! We ordered our noodle soups and pajeon (korean pancake) and omg it was so delicious!! It was hot but such a comforting feeling when eating it! 😋 I was so satisfied after, I literally felt like passing out 🥱 We met up with Farheen and started making our way to Bukchon Hanok Village. This is a famous spot where many tourists go to take pictures of the traditional Korean houses (called hanoks). As it is a neighbourhood with people living there, there are many signs stating to keep the volume low. 🤫 But omg, we walked to get here and it made me realize how hilly Korea is. I remember us walking up this steep hill and I’m like, how do people walk this all the time?! Crazy 😂
After this, we wanted to explore the shopping area of Korea more. So we decided to walk over to Eulji-ro, which Yebin and Jen said had a lot of shopping malls and markets. I wanted to go mainly to find some cheap Korean chopsticks and maybe some cute clothes. Sadly they started closing up when we arrived. The shopping malls were a bit out of our price range so we decided not to go.
We walked by Dongdaemun Design Plaza, which is a famous landmark in Korea, and a lot of kdramas film here! 😄 (I recognized it from Vincenzo 👀)
Yebin also said there was a famous accessory store nearby called Nyu Nyu. I heard of this store on TikTok so I was so down to check it out! It’s 3 storeys full of jewelry, purses, hair accessories and even some clothing! 🤩 Safe to say, we spent at least an hour in here browsing and shopping since many things were so well priced!
After our mini accessory haul, we were all starving, but didn’t know what to eat. We thought it’d be best to eat around our hotel neighbourhood as it was already quite late. We all decided we were craving some kbbq, so we searched a bunch of restaurants. Sadly a lot of them were closing up for the night, but luckily we found a hidden spot that let us sit down. It wasn’t a typical kbbq spot though, it seemed quite fancy. 😳 They sat us on the bar and we looked at the menu. Farheen accompanied us since it was pretty late and we all wanted to hang out together, but she didn’t eat anything from the restaurant (she had some food before). Yebin and Jen looked at the menu (which was all in Korean) and told the servers what we wanted. As it was such a fancy place, they grilled the meat in front of us and served it to us. It was SOOO YUMMY! The pork belly was just *chefs kiss*. 🤤 I do wish we could’ve found a restaurant where we could grill it ourselves but oh well! At least we tried real Korean BBQ! 🍖
As we were all exhausted from that day, we left to go back to our hotel and passed out immediately 😴Read more