20250820 Wednesday, August 20, 2025. Seoul City Tour
We really didn’t need to set any alarm clocks because in our jet lagged state, we could barely keep our eyes open at 9pm, but were wide awake by 4am.
The rooms are equipped with high tech toilets that have seat heaters, bidets and even blow driers.
There is a foot light that comes on automatically when you enter the bathroom at night, and the toilet even flushes itself automatically.
Another interesting room feature was emergency evacuation rappelling harnesses and ropes stationed under the desk by the windows. We were on the third floor, so I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be terrifying, but it is amazing how prepared Koreans are for any eventualities.
John and Franklin walked around the block doing reconnaissance and found lots of restaurants all around the block, including a 24hr restaurant that was just a few steps down the street. Called the Ssada Kitchen, it has a self service kiosk near the entrance with selectable English menus and took several payment options making it easy to use. So instead of having a mediocre overpriced American breakfast at the hotel, we had a Korean breakfast. There were plenty of locals eating there. In addition to having a kiosk for orders, the tables had chopsticks, spoons and napkins in a drawer that slid out of the side. One of their specialties is Gimbab, which is like a sushi roll with nori wrap and various fillings. Omelets were served over a heap of fried rice and with a protein of choice on the side. Ben ordered shrimp which deep fried with heads and tails, but the shells had been removed from the elongated bodies, and they were quite tasty.
John said the scene had changed from the night life which was quite active when he and Franklin walked around the block. During the early morning hours, supplies were being delivered to the various shops and restaurants. Ben saw someone netting live fish out of a tank in the back of a truck to deliver fresh to a seafood restaurant. One thing we didn’t see were tons of people walking their dogs or dog poo on the streets like in many other global cities. There was, of course, a Starbucks within a few hundred feet of the hotel.
The Sungnyemun Gate is less than a block from the hotel entrance. This 14th century structure was one of 8 city wall gates, and was the southern border of the city.
Our Tours By Locals guide Kun-Yong Y, who goes by “Denny” showed up early with a clean Hyundai Grand Starex minivan with 4 captains seats in the back and Ben riding shotgun. It was certainly nice to be driven around in an air conditioned minivan when the temperature outside was in the mid to upper 80’s with partly cloudy skies and muggy conditions.
Special parking mirror for very tight spaces.
Tours By Locals Seoul Guide “Denny”
Next we visited Gwanghwamun Square featuring a statue of Sejong the Great, who invented the Korean alphabet in the 15th century to bring education to the masses. With between 50,000 and 100,000 characters, Chinese was a language strictly for the elite.
Nearby, construction of a temporary monument commemorating 80 years of liberation from Japanese occupation during WWII was being set up.
From there, we walked to the Gwanghwamun Gate, guarding the Gyeonbokgung Palace. We got to watch a changing of the guard ceremony, complete with a marching band and colorful costumes. All around the Gate were female foreign tourists wearing traditional Korean dresses, apparently inspired by K-pop dramas set in the era. These outfits can be rented from many shops all over the tourist areas.
Rather than walk around the hot and humid outdoors palace, we opted to see the adjacent air conditioned National Palace Museum of Korea, which housed artifacts from Korea’s imperial era.
We then headed up to the rooftop of the Nation Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which featured a sweeping view of the Palace grounds and surrounding mountains. Seoul is surrounded by several mountains. Hidden within these mountains is a city wall encircling Seoul like a miniature Great Wall of Seoul. The city gates are remnants of this city wall. To learn more about this, we next saw the Seoul City Wall Museum, and climbed a bit of the wall next to the Eastern gate. Much of the wall has disappeared, but city walls were a big thing during the medieval era.
To the northeast of the imperial palace is a neighborhood that once housed the workers who kept that palace running called the Bukchon Hanok village. It is in a hilly area with winding and twisting narrow streets showcasing late 19th century Hanok architecture. We were dropped off at the top of the hill and wandered our way down to the bottom of the hill, peering into the narrow and twisting alleyways and streets. There were lots of foreign tourists in costume taking Instagram selfies in front of some of the buildings. Throughout most of Seoul, neighborhoods like these were demolished to make room for more efficient high rise apartments, but this neighborhood had been home to high ranking administrators within the palace. It has become a tourist attraction because it is a frequent filming location for Korean dramas. Local residents have begun to rebel and have recently imposed tourism curfews to help them preserve their sanity.
We had lunch at a traditional Bulgogi and Beef Rib soup restaurant. I’d have to say we must have pretty decent Korean restaurants back at home because the food was virtually indistinguishable from what we have had in American Korean restaurants.
After lunch, we headed down some very narrow and winding alleys into the Insadong Korean Cultural Street, a neighborhood that had been notable for its involvement in much of the paintings and printing work required of the Imperial government. It is now home to lots of galleries, shops and restaurants. While we were there, there was a civil defense drill with alerts on our cell phones and lots of emergency response vehicles on the streets. We didn’t have to do anything during the drill, but Denny told us that they used to compulsory for all civilians during earlier administrations. Back then, civilians had to head into shelters and get off the streets.
We returned to our hotel and walked the short distance to the Namdaemun Market, which is a warren of narrow alleyways, outdoor and indoor malls, and thousands of shops selling every imaginable ware. We were hoping to find Lithium polymer battery banks with the (CCC) marking now required by Chinese domestic air carriers, but discovered that not even Seoul, with its proximity to China, had any power banks for sale with the (CCC) marking. Many of the indoor malls were crowded with Korean women engaged in shopping.
On a nearby hill is the iconic Namsan Seoul Tower. There is a free funicular that takes visitors from the bottom of the hill to an upper level where a paid gondola ride carries visitors to the base of the tower. Instead of going to the top of that hill, we went through a tunnel under it to get to the Banpo Bridge, which is a double deck bridge across the Han river. The lower level is dedicated to a bicycle pathway connected to an extensive riverfront park. Next to the south end of the bridge is a complex of floating venues for shows and events. A film crew was just wrapping up a shoot at one of the venues as we drove by. There are nightly light and water works shows along the riverbank.
A Buddhist temple in the heart of Seoul was our next destination. This one is surrounded by a vast garden of Lotus flowers.
Our last stop was a drive by past the Blue House, or Korean Presidential mansion. It is currently undergoing renovation and is unoccupied, but interestingly enough, they don’t allow photography of the Blue House from the front approach. We did get to stop and take photos at a water fountain with a Phoenix, symbol of the royal family, with one of Seoul’s mountains in the background.
We returned to the hotel hot and tired, but felt that we had really covered a lot of Seoul in just one day.
After resting up briefly, we walked to the Myeongdong Market, which is a huge outdoors mall and market, larger than the Namdaemun market, and open much later. Lots of street food vendors had set up their carts in the streets of the market. There was a lot of food on sticks as well as other street food items including a lot of things we had seen on YouTube videos, such as fish shaped baked goods with sweet fillings like red bean paste, and Takoyaki, octopus filled dough balls.
We found a Korean Barbecue restaurant and had dinner there. Aside from the use of huge chunks of charcoal that still looked like wood, it was again very similar to what we had experienced in the US for Korean Barbecue.
We stopped by the South Gate for some photos on our way back to the hotel.
We check out early tomorrow and head to Incheon airport to fly into Shenyang, China tomorrow. We have arranged for the same Jumbo taxi driver who brought us to this hotel to take us back to the airport at 7am. We’ll have to repack the suitcases before calling it a night.
