March 8th:
- Coffee Prince
When I was at the police station with Seri, she told me that the Coffee Prince drama coffee shop was near the guesthouse, so Monique and I went to go find it. It's definitely really close to the guesthouse, but unfortunately, it was closed. We ended up just taking a couple pictures, but it was cool to see.
- Lotte World
The rest of the day we decided to go to Lotte World. =D It was pretty cool because when we got there we found out that its some sort of special time where you get 10,000 won off of your ticket. At first it felt like a cheap rip off of Disneyland (you can definitely see the infuences), but after a while you forget about it and just have fun. There are some pretty good drop rides and a fun wave one. I also liked the Balloon ride where you take a fake hot air balloon around the inside of the park. It's sort of like a monorail, but you're hanging instead of attached to a track below. My absolute favorite ride was Aquarius though. When we were in line, we had some fun reading the vandalism on the surrounding area (there are a lot of Big Bang fans who feel the need to proclaim Big Bang's VIPness by writing it on random walls...XD) and the guy working the ride was really funny when he said "something something something angyeong (glasses)" to me and I was like...'I'm not wearing glasses...' Then I realized he was talking about Monique, who I turned to and asked if she wanted to take off her glasses, then the guy went, "GLASSES! FLY!" Hahaha. The ride was weird. There was a seatbelt and a restraining device that was around your hips. (You straddle the ride.) It starts off ridiculously fast and is really fun since it feels like you're flying. ^^ I tried some funny peanut butter squid...not a fan. And some really good Korean taffy. We ate dinner at a nearby pork restaurant in the Hongdae area. We had what my dictionary calls 'backfat', hahaha but it was just bbq pork. Then we found a little waffle/shaved ice place called Lovice where a cute old couple worked. I had my first banana patbingsoo. Best dessert ever. Mmm. =D
March 9:
We woke up pretty late today, but ended up meeting with Monique's friend, Jihyeon. She took us to a restaurant that's popular with Japanese tourists. It was basically rice, soup, bulgogi, steamed egg, and 29 side dishes. I kid you not. 29 side dishes that were all different. Craziness. Then she took us around Myeongdong, a shopping street. We also went to the Traditional Village that was in the area and looked at the way older houses were set up and ate some roasted sweet potatoes. Apparently the princess who lived in that house moved to Changdeokgung, which we saw a couple of days earlier. We walked around the street and Lotte Department Store. There's a lot of cute stuff, but I didn't buy anything...I'm kind of waiting on Gyeongju just in case. We sat in a Coffee Bean for a bit and talked until we went off to meet another one of Monique's friends, Gwi Young. She had brought her friend Hana with her. We walked around Hongdae area together and ended up at a really expensive cafe where Gwi Young treated us to drinks and a big banana pecan waffle. (Nice warm chai latte on a cold day!) After that, we went to N Seoul Tower. Seoul Tower was pretty amazing. The lights were great and when you go up to the viewing area on the very top, the windows are labeled with the other parts of the world in that direction. (Tokyo and San Francisco!!!) The level below the top had windows labeled with important places in Seoul which was cool because we'd actually been to a good deal of them. After a dinner of odeng and ddeokbokgi, we took some pictures in front of a famous theatre and then made our way home.
Gyeongju tomorrow! Sorry I can't expand...it's 1am and we're getting up at 5:30, I'm going to bed!
