Seoul Trip 2015: Day 5 ~ Last-Minute Stops and Shopping! [★]

July 21, 2015

This was our last day in Seoul. 。・゚゚・(>д<)・゚゚・。 The past four days passed by so fast. We yearned for a year to finally land in Seoul, and now, it's time to leave.

Our flight home is still in the early evening, and so we still had time to do all our last-minute stuff. We went to Myeongdong in the morning to do shopping.

We spotted this poster of Kim Junsu's Flower album promotion!
Bought Gifts for Home
Our first task on the list was to buy pasalubong to give away to people back home. We went to a shop with all those cute stuff and bought souvenirs. I bought socks and some keychains.

And because it was Myeongdong, we were not able to resist buying more cosmetics! We passed by a lot of them and heard that they have some items for sale, which we did not notice before. We bought items from Skinfood, Faceshop, Tony Moly, and Laneige.

We were actually searching for a grocery store to buy food items so we headed to the Lotte mall nearby. There were no grocery stores there, just clothing departments. That's where we saw these cute LINE merchandise items!




While walking back to the main streets of Myeongdong, we spotted this - a Kim Soo Hyun museum!

He's really popular here!


Had Lunch at Yoogane (유가네)
Since day one, we were craving to eat at this restaurant. My sister had researched that this is quite a popular dining place here and one of their must-try dishes is their marinated chicken galbi fried rice!





A video posted by Kathleen R (@katalinarosario) on



We also ordered this cold spicy vegetable soup. It was my first time to try something like this (cold on first bite, then a spicy aftertaste!). It was really good too. However it was too heavy for us, we were not able to finish it all. (>_<。)

Yoogane's menu. If only there was enough time, I want to try them all!



Visited Kim Jaejoong's Cafe JHolic
We cannot leave Seoul without dropping by our beloved Jaejoong's cafe, most especially that it's just within Myeongdong! After that hearty lunch at Yoogane, we went our way and searched for his shop. Only relying on directions posted by fellow fans online, we made our way and fortunately, arrived at the right place!

There it is!


The cafe is located on the third floor of a building, and you have to enter the MAG & MAG store to get inside the cafe. It's understandable to hesitate entering at first, but the signs outside encourage fans to just enter the store. There's a stair in the middle of the store and it will lead up to JHolic cafe!



There were just a handful of people when we went inside the cafe. The atmosphere was kinda gloomy, because Jaejoong just entered the military a few days ago (on March 30, this was on April 6).


Jaejoong conceptualized this cafe with his loving fans in mind. You can see that in the dedication messages around the cafe.


Fans are well familiar that Jaejoong owns a cat, named Jiji. These toys show how Jaejoong is such a cat lover. :D


There are also these "cartoonized Jaejoong cut-outs" on display at the store. (´∀`)♡




We ordered two slices of their cakes there - red velvet and strawberry cheesecake.


Jaejoong really knows fans would be coming to visit his cafe. The cashier provides a plastic with Jaejoong's signature printed on it. It's meant to be as a holder of the receipt, coz we know fans will keep it as a souvenir!

A photo posted by Kathleen R (@katalinarosario) on

Bought Groceries at Lotte Mart @ Seoul Station
I did not capture any photo of our wonderful adventure to this department store. It was one of the most stressful moments we had in Seoul. From Myeongdong, we rode the subway to Seoul Station because we knew there's where the main Lotte Mart is located. We were happily hoarding Korean snacks onto our grocery basket. We couldn't really choose which one to get. After finishing with the cashier, we realized that we need to box all of those items ourselves! Lotte does not provide plastic bags. Instead, there's a huge boxing area in front of the cashier, where all the shoppers were busy grabbing boxes and placing all their purchased items in it.

We actually had the option of availing eco bags, but it cost too much (₩7,000!). Me and sister almost fought because she wanted to get the eco bags, but I insisted to just place them all in the box. Pressed also in time, we stressfully tried to get all the items onto the used Lotte storage boxes. Thankfully we were able to make it. There's no way we'd be able to carry these back through the subway so we decided to just hail a taxi to go back to our hostel.

It really helped that I knew a bit of Korean. The taxi driver thought we just wanted to be dropped off at the Myeongdong subway station. Our hostel was still a bit of a walking distance from the station so we told him (mostly through hand signals lol) that we wanted to get off in front of the hostel itself. He asked "어디에서?" which means "Where?" and so I started giving him driving directions. Good thing we also knew the driving route to our hostel, even though we used to walk on the other side of the road to our hostel from the subway station. In a few minutes, we were already in front of the hostel. *whew!*


Hurriedly Traveled to the Airport
Our stressful adventure did not end there. We have not packed properly and we needed to leave ASAP or else we'd be late to the airport. T^T The next hour was full of chaos. we packed up as fast as we could. We also cleaned our room. It's a guesthouse, not a hotel, so we needed to throw out our own trash outside the hostel. Good thing the owner of the hostel was kind, he did not charge us extra for checking out late. (thank you oppa!) 

The travel to the station was another challenge. The road from the hostel to the subway is a downhill road, so we needed to hold onto our luggages. Good thing foreigners struggling to carry luggages is a common sight in Myeongdong. We spotted several of them on previous days actually. Today was our turn to shine. LOL. The number of our luggages were multiplied by two! One of our bags just contained all of the things we bought (mostly cosmetics). This is not even counting the other things we bought. But wait, there's more! We had to carry our luggages down the narrow escalator and up the stairs to cross to the street where the airport bus stop is.

One of my luggage weighed more than 30 kg, and I had to carry it up several flights of stairs! I had to do all the carrying up in batches, because there's no way I would be able to carry them up in one go. It's disappointing that no one even cared to help, even though I was walking up the stairs with other people. Oh well. (Those gentlemen in Korean dramas are not true!!! Screw them!!)

We were just able to relax (at last) when we were already inside the bus and traveling to Incheon airport.

aboard the airport bus!
It was a long travel. I slept along the way. It was already sunset when we arrived at the airport.


We were not able to see the exterior of the airport when we first arrived (because it was during the night). It was beautiful. :D

Inside Incheon aiport. We still did not see any celebrities T.T

We did the usual business at the airport  (there were still a few mishaps with our luggage hahaha). It was a really tiring day. We mostly slept during the flight. It was already 5AM when we landed in Manila. Our parents met us at the airport.

Thankfully we were able to arrive home safe and sound. Yey! Our cosmetics were all in good shape . Wohoo! (Always remember to ask the airport staff to label them as fragile!)

all the goodies we got from Seoul!





And that closes our journey to South Korea. 

I'm writing this post three months since our travel, and everything still felt like a dream. I'm yearning to go back soon!

감사합니다, 대한민국. ヽ(´ー`)ノ



~o~

Do you also want to travel to Seoul? I will write on my next posts some things to prepare for your dream trip to the land of kpop and koreanovelas! Stay tuned!


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