that's seoul ravin'

For someone who claims to love Korean pop music as much as I do (I do dedicate half my waking life to [waxing lyrical] about these gene pool lottery winners), it's preposterous that I had never visited Korea prior to last year. I mean, some would almost consider that shameful.

We were thoroughly spoiled by the perpetual perfect combination of a light breeze and soft sunshine cutting through the barely nippy weather. Early Fall in Seoul was just that glorious and I will admit right now to skipping down more than one cobblestone street in glee solely because I live for dat Fall-time breeze, okay.

What I didn't quite expect though, was the absurd atrocious NO REALLY WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE amount of walking we had to do. Oh for the love of all things good and holy believe me when I say that there. was. a. lot. of. walking. Let's not speak of me buying too-big foot cushions from 7/11 in Garosu-gil and then unglamorously trying to stick it in my heeled boots as an attempt to salvage my aching feet. Let's also not speak of me eventually caving to my growing limp later on that very same day in Myeongdong as I went against my sensibilities and bought a pair of outlandishly [glittery toms]. Let's just not.

P.S. Two weeks after returning from Seoul, my right heel was still sore.Yup, being in your mid-20s is not fun.

well if you insist. who are we to disagree-ee-ee?

Eat, we did. We chowed down on fake food,

is it... cardboard flavored?

And then some.

meat and you always, and forever

A good chunk of our time was spent in Hongdae. Confession: I rooted myself at the [3ce] section of stylenanda for far, far too long, swatching everything in sight. [Sora]! Pretty colors! I am weak.

Meandering, getting a feel of youth culture, eating an unholy amount of patbingsu and drinking more mediocre coffee than ever was the name of our Hongdae game. The coffee/ cafe culture in Seoul is extremely prevalent, with a quirky kitschy industrial concrete-floored one at every turn, especially in Hongdae.

The best coffee we had was at [Paul Bassett] near E-dae, though I believe he has outposts in Gangnam as well. While I'm on the topic of recommendations, oh my goodness the patbingsu. My friend from college took us out for some good ol' 치맥 chi-maek (portmanteau for chicken and maekju, which basically is chicken & beer) and patbingsu and even though we were stuffed UP TO HERE *points to throat* with chicken and beer, we promptly finished off 2 entire portions of patbingsu after dinner. It was that good. So good that these two direction donkeys (that's us, btw) set off to hunt for it again the very next day and getting lost for that patbingsu was worth every wrong turn. At this point, I should tell you the name of this place, shouldn't I. It's [옥루몽 ok ru mong] and it is the best icy goodness (paired with fresh, smooth, sweetened red beans topped with perfectly bouncy mochi) you will ever put in your mouth annnd I am now hungry. Good job, me.

spot the tourists!

coffee, tea, cake, beer... and me in a giant mirror.

legendary patbingsu at ok ru mong

My favorite part of Seoul though? Garosu-gil. Garosu-gil was utterly, completely delightful. It was a treat just walking down the gorgeous, tree-lined streets of Garosu and the fact that apparently a disproportionately large amount of pretty people come out of the woodwork on weekends certainly helped. We spent the better part of our Saturday people-watching and trying our best to tuck the tourists in us away from sight.

clearly, we were not part of the pretty people posse 

While there, I also attempted an #OOTD. Hashtag.

(spoiler, i failed.)

Also, selfies. (or should I say...

... seoulfies)

We ate a disgusting amount of food throughout our trip, as we do. A lot of it is documented in the vlog but unfortunately, my memory card ran out of space as we treated ourselves to [jung sik dang]. When we vacation, we try to have one nice-ish meal and this time, we decided on jung sik dang. An intimate restaurant in a quiet part of Apgujeong, we enjoyed every last bit of the immaculate presentation, thoughtfully put together flavors and excellent service. In short, this was pretty damn good.

look ma, fancy korean food

you. too.

♡ 서울, 난 니가 좋아 [x]

비디오 / 서울 2013 
bi-di-eo / seoul 2013