South Korea Trip!

Sunday June 3rd was the day that I was flying to South Korea. I had most of my things packed the day before. I woke up Sunday morning at 7 AM. I set my alarm so that I had a lot of time before I had to catch the bus to the Airport at 11 AM. Once I woke up, I finished packing everything, downloaded some things onto my laptop including music, and had a banana and grapes for breakfast. At around 10:30 AM, Oma walked me down to the bus stop, and I said goodbye to her once I boarded the bus. It took me right to the Airport. I checked in and found my gate. 

The first flight that I had was just to Paris and only took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I had about a 2 hour layover in Paris. The next flight was the long 11 hour flight to the Incheon Airport.. I was sitting in the middle seats of a row of 4 chairs. Luckily the chair to the right of me was empty so I could kind of lay down during that flight. I watched the movie Geostorm and listened to a lot of music. I probably got 3-4 hours of sleep on the flight. We finally landed in South Korea at 12:30 PM. I had to fill out some forms so that I could get my free 90 day visa. The forms were fairly short, and I got a little piece of paper saying that I could stay in South Korea as a visitor for 3 months maximum. I then exited the airport and met Juho. He was waiting for me and held up a sign that had my name on it. We went and got tickets for a bus that brought us into Seoul and near the place we would be staying. 

For lunch, we had some street food in the Tongin Traditional Market. 

The white / spicy things above are part of a dish called Tteok-bokki which is stir-fried rice cakes. They were very delicious. After we had Lunch we went to go rent some traditional clothes so we could get into the Gyeongbokgung Palace for free. Juho told me that if we wore the Hanbok clothing, we could get in for free. Hanbok is the name of the traditional Korean clothes. We went to rent the clothes and then walked to the Palace. 

We got a lot of cool pictures once we were inside the palace:

We spent about 2 hours in the palace, then we went out and returned our outfits and walked back to our accommodation. A bit later, Juho's mom and brother came to check in on us. His mom was very nice, and brought us some sandwiches that she gave to Juho. Later that night for dinner we ordered some chicken. It was very delicious. We then planned our day for Tuesday, our plan was to go to Lotte World which is an amusement park and then to the Lotte World Tower, which is the 6th tallest building in the world. 

Tuesday June 5, we woke up and packed up all of our stuff. We left our accommodation to go to the train station. On the way, we stopped in a small store to get some breakfast. I got a bento box and warmed it up in the microwave in the shop. 



Once we got to the train station underground, I got a card that let me use the train whenever and I just had to top up about 8 Euros on it (10,000 Korean Won). We took the train to Lotte World which is basically a huge amusement / theme park. There is a huge inside section and outside section also. We got there around 9:15 AM, and we got in line to get our tickets. Lotte World opens at 9:30 AM so we were able to get in after the large amount of people went through first. We found some lockers so that we could store our stuff in, including my orange bag that contained everything I needed for the trip. 



After we dropped our stuff off, we started to enjoy the attractions. One of the favorite attractions that we did was the Gyro Drop, which is a ride where you get on and it brings you up very high, then drops you straight down and stops you right before you hit the ground. 

Here is a picture of the Gyro Drop

Another ride that we went on

There is an app that goes with Lotte World that allows you to try to and reserve places in line using the Magic Pass. Every 15 minutes we would open the app and try to reserve places for certain rides that would otherwise have a wait of about 1 hour. Yonghwa and I were lucky and each booked a different one. Mine was a ride where you rode a boat through the water and it also was a bit like a rollercoaster. Around 3 PM, we were finished at Lotte World. We quickly visited the Lotte World Folk Museum that had some history stuff in it before we left. 

Next I wanted to go to the Lotte World Tower which is right next to Lotte World. It is the tallest building in South Korea and the 5th tallest building in the world. We eventually found the spot where we could purchase the tickets to go to the top of the building. 



The Seoul Sky tickets we got allowed us to go basically to the very top of the building. We took an elevator about 118 floors up then walked the rest of the way. There was a place where we could walk on glass and see straight below us.





We were able to walk to floor 123 which was the top most floor available to the public. It had a little place to buy drinks and I got a juice. We got to about 500 meters in the air. It was a really cool experience. Our next plan was to go to meet up with Juho's brother and father to drive to Juho's grandpas house. We got on a train to go to a specific place and we met with them and started to drive. It was about a 2 hour drive to the house. It was very far from Seoul and in the country. Once we finally got there I met all of Juho's relatives. 

At 8:30 PM we started the ritual to honor Juho's great grandparents. I watched everybody do their part then I even joined in at the end. 

We had a large dinner. 

We left around 11:30 PM from the house and made it back to Seoul around 1:00 AM. Juho's father drove Juho and I to our new hotel and dropped us off. We got set up and I went back downstairs to buy some snacks from the shop connected to the hotel. Then, Juho and I had some noodles and watched some TV. We went to bed around 3:00 AM. 

Wednesday June 6th, my alarm went off but I turned it off immediately and went back to sleep, so we ended up waking up around 10:30 AM. Juho and I each took quick showers then we went to take a train to meet Yonghwa in Gangnam. He did not stay with us the first night in the hotel because Juho and I came back really late from Juho's grandpas house the night before. We met Yonghwa by the trainstation then walked around for a bit. 



We decided to take a taxi to a shopping center. We walked around to find a restaurant where Juho and Yonghwa had some lunch. I did not eat because I was not hungry. 



After they finished eating, we walked around the shopping center for a while. 



We stopped for about 40 minutes at this place that was showing off the new features of the Samsung Galaxy S9. We did a lot of tasks that included using the phone, we had the phone make emojis of us that we could use, we also recorded a water balloon being popped with the phone and watched it in slow motion. The quality was amazing! After we did all of the tasks, we each got a coupon for a free ice-cream at a shop in the shopping center. 



After this, we went to visit the Coex Aquarium that was connected to the mall. It was actually a very large aquarium, and had more animals other than fish such as otters, and other land animals. There was piranhas also. 



The above picture is a picture of a jellyfish. We met Juho's friend Jinho right in the middle of while we were going through the Aquarium. After we finished going through the entire Aquarium, we went to a lot of different shops in the shopping center. These included Adidas, Nike and Converse. I bought an Adidas bag in the store that I could strap across my chest.



 We left the shopping center to go to more stores in Gangnam. We went to JD, and that was a really cool store. They were playing very good music and had a lot of cool shoes including Adidas, Fila and Lacoste.



 I bought some Fila white shoes. Jinho bought a lot of stuff including clothes from Nike and a pair of shoes from JD. After we were all finished shopping we went to a restaurant named Shake Shack. It had burgers and I got a chicken burger, and so did Juho. 



Here are some more pics:



After we finished eating, Juho, Yonghwa and I went to our hotel and Jinho went back home. Then, Yonghwa went to his house to grab some things he needed and I started to wash some clothes, they had washers in the Hotel that took only 3000 Won to wash and dry which is about 2 Euro. 

Thursday, Juho, Yonghwa and I were going to Ocean World. We all woke up at 6:30 AM so that we could catch our bus at 8 AM. I took a backpack so that we could carry 3 towels and all of our swimsuits. We left to the train station and found our bus at around 7:45 AM. The bus ride took about 2 hours to get to Ocean World. Once we got there we walked in and put our shoes and all of our stuff in a locker and changed into our swimsuits. Then we went to enjoy the park. I did not get any pictures since we left our phones in the locker, but here are some pictures of Ocean World from google:




We spent the day in Ocean World doing slides and swimming in the wave pool and things like that. We also enjoyed the many hot tubs around Ocean World, we probably spent a collective 2 hours total in hot tubs Thursday. We ended up leaving Ocean World around 5:20 PM, so that we could get our bus back to Seoul at 6 PM. 

We got back to Seoul around 8 PM. Juho took me to this cool bookstore that had a ton of books in it, and a huge table for people to read at.



We ended up going to this restaurant that served this soup with chicken and rice in it. It was very delicious, and you take the chicken out and put the bones in a bucket that they give you. After dinner we walked around downtown a bit, then we took the train back to our hotel and went to bed soon after. 



Friday, we were all very tired after waking up. Juho woke me up around 8:30 AM so that we could eat breakfast as it ended at 9:30 AM. We went downstairs to eat breakfast. After we ate Juho and I walked about 15 minutes to meet Juho's grandmother and we sat and had coffee. I got an Ice Tea which was very delicious. About 30 minutes later, Juho and I walked back to our hotel. We all went back to bed and woke up again around 12:30 PM. 

Around 2 PM, we all got ready to go to a shopping center called Starfield about 1 hour away. We first took a train, then a bus. We got there around 3 PM. We walked around the mall for a bit, there were many designer brand shops around. We went into some of them, and we also visited the Nike, Adidas and New Balance stores. At around 4 PM, we went to this part of the shopping center called Sports Monster. It is basically a large activity center, its kind of best described as an adult playground, there are a ton of things to do such as sports, trampoline things and rope courses in the air. 

At 5:50 PM we went outside to catch a Taxi to go to dinner at Juho's aunts restaurant. It is a really cool restaurant and they serve food that is cheaper than a lot of other places so the students go there a lot. They gave Juho, Yonghwa and I food for free which was very nice. After we had our food and stayed there for a couple of hours, we walked to a PC Cafe for 1 hour. I have never heard of a PC Cafe or been to one, but Juho told me that they are very popular in South Korea. They are basically these large centers that have a lot of computers for teenagers or anyone to go and play games. There are probably 100-200 computers in each center, and it only costs about 1 Euro per hour to use the computer. Also, since its called a PC Cafe you can order food right from your computer and the people will bring it right to your seat where you pay and just eat it there. It is a really cool place. 



After we were there for 1 hour, we walked back to the restaurant and we had even more food. After that we took the train back to our hotel. We got back pretty late because we spent a lot of time with Juho's family. We went to sleep pretty quickly, and also Juho did because he had the ACT the next morning. 

Saturday morning, I woke up at around 6 AM when Juho was waking up to get ready to go to the ACT area. I immediately fell back asleep, then Yonghwa and I woke up around Noon. Juho was suppose to finish the ACT around 12-1 PM, and we were having lunch with Juho's and Yonghwa's parents. Yonghwa and I got picked up by his parents and also Juho's parents and we all went to the restaurant. It was on the 6th floor of this gigantic building, and it was a buffet. Juho showed up about 45 minutes later around 3 PM. We got a group picture:



Our next stop was at an artist village. Juho took some cool pictures of us there:




We next walked around to find a place for Juho to get some henna done. We eventually found a place and Juho and Yonghwa got some henna done on their arms, and Juho on his arm and back of his neck. While we were there, Juho's friend joined with us and we next went to a place where we had to try to escape the room. It was pretty fun, we had to solve problems and questions in order to escape the room in under 1 hour. It was quite challenging but thats what made it fun. I think in the end we might have just made it on time. 

After we finished that, we went to a PC Cafe for 2 more hours since under 19 year olds have to be out of the PC Cafes by 10 PM. I played some games for a bit, then watched an episode of Riverdale. I also ordered some food including Noodles, Ice Tea, Chips and 2 things of rice. I ate all of those while watching the show. At 10 PM, we had to leave and our time was up anyway so we left and began to walk home. We went to a bus-stop where we said goodbye to Juho's friend we had meet up with earlier. We then walked to the train station and found our way home. 

Saturday night I did some more laundry, and talked to my dad on the phone. Tomorrow we were going to a temple with Juho's parents and brother. 

Sunday morning, I woke up around 10 AM. We left around 11 AM to meet Juho's brother and father to go and climb a mountain to see a small temple. We took the train to the place where we got in a Taxi with Juho's brother and father. The taxi brought us to the bottom of the mountain. It took us about 20 minutes to climb the mountain to reach the temple. 



Once we reached the top, we had Lunch that consisted of different types of Kimchi dishes and rice. There was no meat because the monk of the temple does not eat any meat. The lunch was very good, and after we ate we went with the monk to have some tea. It was a very peaceful place where we had the tea. The first type of tea that we had is used to help relax your brain and ease stress. We also had some apples and this really fluffy bread. After that we went up to visit the actual temple. 





Later, we went to walk back down the large mountain we had climbed. It was much easier to go down hill and once we were at the very bottom, we found ourselves in a small town. We went to a Virtual Reality place for 1 hour so Juho's mother could meet us there. Juho's brother, Kyung Ho and I spent about 40 minutes on these hoverboard things. I had never rode one before, but after a bit I got very good at it. They look like this, they were very popular a few years ago. 



We were finished around 6 PM and Juho's parents walked us to the train station. Juho and I said goodbye to them, as I would not see them again before I left the next day. I thanked them for everything then Juho and I went to take the train. We took the train to the river and sat and waited for Yonghwa to find us. We watched all of the bmx bike riders doing tricks and stuff, some of them were very good. We found Yonghwa and we went to go eat dinner at a nice Korean BBQ place. It was very delicious, and we went back to our hotel after that. 




Here are some more pictures:



Monday morning I woke up at 8:30 AM so I could take a shower before the long plane ride home. After I showered, I went back to sleep at 8:50 AM until 9:30. I woke up again and we all went down to eat breakfast. After that, we went back up and I got packed and ready to go by 11 AM. We decided to take a train to the airport, so we went to the train station and found the correct train to bring us there. We transferred to the airport train and then about 1 hour later we got there. I got my boarding card and then we all had burgers in the airport before I left. 

We got our last pictures in the airport:



I said goodbye to them both and then walked into security. I passed through and found my gate. The first flight was the 11 hour one. Since my flight was at 2:40 PM, I did not expect to sleep a lot on the flight. I was right, I watched 2 movies on the flight: Cars 3, and Red Sparrow. They were both good, but I thought Cars 3 was pretty good also considering it was the 3rd movie of the series. I listened to a lot of music on the flight and edited my Videos that I had been uploading of Korea to my Youtube. Here is a link to the 3rd video if you want to watch it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KP0j_7-hcs&t=268s

At about 8:30 PM we landed in Paris. My final flight to Dublin was at 9:55 PM. I boarded the plane and later landed in Dublin. I walked to the checkpoint where they divide you into EU passports and non EU passports. It is the quickest that I have ever been through that checkpoint, once it was my turn it took only about 10 seconds. I went to find the Aircoach and at about 10:45 PM I was home!

June 3 - June 11