3rd Winter in South Korea 2023: A Lovely Day for a KPop fan

It was our last full day, and a day we dedicated mostly to our KPop fan. Mon and I, of course, have always been fans, but perhaps not as ardent as when we used to be more than a decade ago.

Nevertheless, we were excited to accompany Lot in new places we have personally visited, despite this trip being out trip there.

But barely starting the day, another bickering happened again. And that time, due to the internet connection and a sim card.

For some reason, they had been having difficulties connecting to the hotspot of my phone with an eSim. Apparently, it had been an issue since the first day, which made it difficult for them to browse when we were out and about.

Needless to say, we spend almost the first hour addressing that sim card issue, with us ending up buying a physical sim card from a convenience store — to think our first stop of the day was Myeongdong Cathedral.LOL

As usual, it was a surreal experience for Lot who only usually sees the cathedral in KDramas. Even us, we always make it a point to drop by and still always in awe of its gothic architecture.

We also quickly went inside to snap a photo of Lot, making sure there was no one in the frame.

After that, Mon had to take a photo again in our favorite tree in Myeongdong Cathedral. The lost of its leaves was a witness of the passing of time and changing of seasons, to think these two photos were taken only four months apart.

It was challenge, though, to make sure there was no other people in the frame, as there were surprisingly more people than we expected that weekday morning.

From Myeongdong Cathedral, our next stop was Namsangol Hanok Village. It was a couple of minutes walking distance from that side of Myeongdong. Few days into our trip, we no longer felt cold as we had acclimatized already. It was not also exactly the sunny weather.

The last time we visited Namsangol was December 2012. Interestingly, it was also right after we dropped by the cathedral.

The great thing about this hanok village was the free entrance. No need to spend a dime just to visit. Despite it now being snow-covered as our last visit, it was still as amazing as we remembered it, with a view of the Seoul Tower from the structures.

Thanks to our tripod and timer, we had managed to take several, non-shaky photos. The lighting was also surprisingly not that harsh despite it being closed to noon time.

From Chungmuro Station, we had to travel again to COEX. We allocated a considerable time traveling despite it being a weekday.

I just recalled how exhausted we were last autumn that it took almost an hour and several transfers just to be there. We left at around 11:40 AM and reached COEX at exactly 12:20 PM.

As soon as we got out Samseong Station, we were greeted by a giant digital billboard of ‘The Glory’. Lot was very excited to be finally there and see the Starfield Library. But first, we had to eat lunch.

As it was already almost half-way lunch time, the quickest one to have was fast food: McDonald’s. It was a challenge to even get a seat for 3 people given how crowded the place was. We even to gamble having Mon order the food while Lot and I wait for a space to free up. A table for 4 eventually became available as Mon collected our food from the cashier.

We were not even to stay that long at COEX, as Lot only wanted to have take some photos at the library. Thank God, again, for the tripod and timer as we got a lot of decent shots.

At about an hour and a half, we left COEX to go to the next spot in our itinerary of the day.

Even if it was already our fifth time in Seoul, Mon and I have not yet visited K Star Road. This road in Gangnam is famous for its gangnamdol (Gangnam Idols) of art statues of popular K-Pop groups.

There were a couple of fans who also wanted to take photos, that we had to, at times, take turns. I also observed that while there were 2nd gen gangnamdols there, 2NE1 was absent. Boo! I even had no idea they had one there before.

Lot, on the other hand, was a happy S♡NE who immediately hugged her OG group. She had been a fan since her high school days, so she will not miss the chance to take photo with SNSD’s gangnamdol.

Lastly, and perhaps located at the far end of the road, was BTS’s gangnamdol. None of us were ARMYs, but that did not stop us from having our photo with it, not for us, but for Mon and Lot’s little sister Anne.

We even had to video call her, so she can have her photo taken with it.

From the K Star Road, we headed straight to SM Entertainment’s headquarter, located at Seoul Forest Station. I was, of course, just tagging alone as I had no idea what we were supposed to do there.

Apparently, there was a café inside. Unfortunately, we had been informed by the reception that it was located some floors above the building, and we unfortunately were not allowed to go up. Welp.

We ended up just having some coffee at the ground floor café, and spent the next hour basking on the heater and figuring out where to go next.

It was already around 4:00 PM by the time we had our afternoon coffee, and it may take another hour just to travel again to our next stop.

From Seoul Forest Station, we traveled all the way to Yeouido Hangang Park. It was the perfect time at 5:30 PM when we arrived, as it was already the golden hour.

Despite us freezing because of the cold wind blowing by the river side, we still managed to relax and people watch. There was a vacant bench where we spent the next half an hour watching the sunlight bathe the other side of the river in a golden light.

We then attempted walking the length of river, as far as we can tolerate the cold.

We walked for about 15 minutes, looking for the floating stage to no avail. It was already at around 6:15 PM when we finally saw it, but it was still some distance from us.

At that point, Mon was already feeling so cold that we did not dare approach it. It also meant we had to walk back for more minutes just to get back to the subway station.

We eventually just took photos of Lot with the floating stage in the background.

We were not even sure where we were headed next. We were supposed to go back to Myeongdong but somehow, I felt that we may be able to squeeze a quick stop at Noksapyeong Bridge.

The footbridge was a fixture of several scenes at the K-Drama ‘Itaewon Class’, with a scenic view of the Seoul Tower lit on the background.

We finally reached it at around 6:45 PM. It was also a challenge to take a decent photos because it was a very busy footbridge. We had to stop several times so as not to be an inconvenience to several pedestrians who had no time for us tourists.

We only spent not even an hour there, as Lot’s feet was already killing her. Mon was also cold, and being on top of the foot bridge did not help with the wind as well.

AT 7:15, we already headed back to Myeongdong.

It was already our last night in Seoul, and we have yet to eat some ramyun and in my case, kimbap. We forgot to eat some last autumn so I did not miss the chance to order some –and do my obligatory kimbap pose.

I can’t recall what was the name of this Korean restaurant, but it had to close at 9:00 PM. We reached it around 8:00 PM, and we had less than an hour to finish our meal. They were even turning away other customers by 8:30 PM, as they were preparing to close.

After dinner, we had no energy to even do some last minute souvenir shopping. We just got some coffee from a café near Stanford Hotel and called it a night.

We have the whole day the following day, anyway, to go around Myeongdong.