This trip to Seoul, South Korea was our first big girl international trip! We’ve been talking about this for the longest time and we finally made it a reality this Summer! 🙂 For the whole week, the weather was super cloudy, humid, and rainy, which was a nice change from the California weather. Once we arrived at Incheon Airport, we were pretty nervous about finding our way to the house that we booked. It was pretty confusing finding the right bus lines, but we eventually got a hang of it. We tried our best to take as many photos to share our adventures with you guys, hope you love it!

This has got to be the best seollongtang that we have ever tried. If you aren’t too familiar with Korean food, this soup consists of ox bone that has been boiled for several hours. It also has several slices of brisket and just a billion green onions. When it arrives at your table, you get to season the soup with salt and pepper yourself. On the side, you enjoy this soup with a bowl of rice, kimchi, and pickled radish. YUM! I’m not a big fan of pickled things, but this was pickle heaven for Cindy LOL. After this whole week of Korean food, kimchi became not so spicy for us anymore! 🙂

For one of the days, we spent the whole day travelling to the Korean Folk Village (Minsokchon). This was a cool experience for the both of us because we saw how people lived in the villages during the Joseon period. We were even able to catch several shows, such as a traditional Korean drum dance and horseback riding that showcased some battle tactics. This village has also been used as sets for a lot of popular Korean period dramas including My Love from the Star and the Great Queen Seondeok!

By the end of the day, we all were pretty hungry and ended up trying a few dishes and this traditional Korean rice wine that was made there at the folk village. This dish was called naengmyeon. It has a chilled broth and comes with pickled radish cucumbers and green noodles! It hit the spot after walking a full day in sticky bug weather. Surprisingly, the wine was really good because it was super smooth.

During this trip, we did a hell of a lot of walking. We remember walking up this giant hill to get a good view of this neighborhood  (Hanok Bukchon Village) that is still styled in traditional Korean architecture. In the end, it was totally worth it for this view and it ended being the perfect place to stop for a rest.

We picked the most rainiest day when we walked up to the Namsan Tower (Seoul Tower), not on purpose of course! The walk took about 30 minutes, but we were taking our time and we were enjoying the view on our way up.

Does this seem familiar to any of you active k-drama watchers? Of course, in good ole best friend fashion, Cindy wanted to get us one of these love locks that is a popular tradition to lock at the tower. We always see couples do this in Korean dramas and now we get the chance to lock our friendship… FOREVER. >:)

Our apartment was in the Dongdaemun area so we were able to do a lot of shopping at night. We were in beauty heaven since we were able to stock up on some of our favorite skincare and makeup brands. The first store we stopped at was the one and only, Etude House. The WHOLE store was just too cute to miss. We were overly excited when we saw the cute pink entrance and just ran in. And of course, we can’t forget about ALL of mask sheets that were such a steal. Just love buying from Korean stores, because when you are finishing up at the cashier, they give you some awesome freebies! Like more masks, yay! We were also able to pass this field of gorgeous light up roses which was also located in our area. It was breathtaking on this light rainy night.

So of course, when we visited Gyeongbokgung, the Korean Royal Palace, we KNEW that we wanted to wear traditional Korean hanboks. If you ever decide to rent hanboks on your visit, be sure to find a shop beforehand. We came unprepared and just went into the first shop we saw, which ended up being more pricey compared to other hanbok rental shops. But we still enjoyed our dresses! They were also pretty comfortable to move around.

When we were selecting our hanboks, there were all types of different colors and patterns available. I would usually go for something all pink and pastel but I didn’t like too many of the tops that were available so I went with this pink and grey matching combo with embroidered floral details.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Me, on the other hand, had to stick with my pastel roots haha. I was lucky to find these perfect shade of pink and mint, which I later found out the gold embroidery meant this was a princess dress!

If I was wearing the princess gown, I just had to get the princess hairdo also. Everything was just oh so cute!!!

Look forward to the next hit historical Korean drama about two girls with pink hair! 😉

Chloe here! This by far is my most FAVORITE meal on the whole trip! If you ever go to Gyeongbokgung, you should definitely stop by afterwards since this restaurant is pretty close by. This place (토속촌삼계탕) is famous for their chicken ginseng soup. They only have like 3 things on the menu which are all variations of this soup lol! The soup was surprisingly very creamy and the chicken was so tender that it fell off the bones. My mouth is literally watering now that I’m thinking about it.

This was taking at the one and only Han River. Mannn was there a LOT of people there! There was a lot of food stands, mini stages, camping tents, kids playing around, and just people spending time in a beautiful area near the river!

Lotte World

Does this seem familiar? No, not Disneyland. It’s Lotte World! This 5 floor amusement park is located inside a Lotte building. It was very fun and a nice change from all the amusement parks we always go to in Los Angeles. Too bad those story telling rides were in Korean, Chloe and I had no idea what was going on haha!

I don’t know if we did a good job, but this was supposed to be a mirror reflection. LOL

Bongeunsa Temple

Bongeunsa Temple was the only Buddhist temple we visited in South Korea. We were planning to do a little shopping at the Coex Mall which was right across the street from this temple, so we took a quick detour. So glad that we were able to stop by because the architecture was beautiful. It was a great place to walk and enjoy the sights.

And lastly, here’s us having fun in front of the Coex Mall. Both of us are more then ready to SHOP! The Mall even houses an aquarium! If you ever visit, we definitely recommend this mall. Other than having fun shopping, the aquarium was fun and different from the traditional American aquarium. You’d think it was small if it was inside a mall, but nope! We spent about 2 hours just in the aquarium alone!

Thanks for reading to the end! We hope you enjoyed seeing all of our pictures from our trip to South Korea! Get ready for a post about our trip in Tokyo! 🙂