Trip to Seoul: Day 7 - My personal favorites and tips

The owner of the Ttrek of Bloo Kpop store

[If you want to read my travelogue from the start, it is here.]
The thursday all goes to travelling home via Helsinki to Arlanda, Stockholm (and then train to Sala). This time the time difference means that the 10 hour flight home is reduced to seemingly only 3, and the shorter one takes no time at all (1 hour flight - 1 hour time difference = 0), making it possible to leave Seoul just before lunch and arrive on Arlanda just at dinner-time. Jetlag is something else, but to be honest I didn't adjust so well during the six nights, not being able to go to sleep until after 01.00 in the evenings (and therefore being quite tired on and off since my schedule meant I had to get up at 7.30 in the morning). Nuff said about that.

What was the best then? Well, lets divide it into places and stuff, and remenber this is a personal list, and one made for winter conditions. A summer list would have been different on some accounts.

A) Places

• Dongdaemun and specifically the Doota store. It was just right for me personally in feeling, taste and price level. Probably the most expensive for this area, so there are other price levels too. Doota give you lots of nice Korean fashion to prices still lower than in Sweden. (If you want more expensive, go to Shinsaegae between Myengdong and Namdaemun markets)
• Insadong-gil. This street in the area with the same name is a nice place to go for buying souvenirs, in a good way, its somewhat cosy and relaxed, and it beats the cheap feeling of other tourist traps I have seen in many other places.
• Myengdong market. A relatively international and fresh place where you can shop or just stroll and take a coffeebreak. Here you find my favorite kpop-music-store, Ttrak of Bloo, which is a dearly recommended visit. 
• Coex underground mall. Don't go to the nearby Gangnam just because you heard of it, go here instead. This superlarge undergound mall is still quite a quality place, and has its own movie theatre even.

B) Things

• Clothes in general - take the chance to buy clothes with styles, patterns and looks that are a little different than at home, or same-looking but cheaper. Remember one thing: sizes! Asians usually don't have the same stature as us, and this means that the bigger ones of us have to think of that.  If you are a very long, muscular or curvy person, be prepared to try some stuff on.
• Head-, hand- and footwear. They really have quite a different range of cool and funny headwear, nice gloves and mittens, and funny socks. Agreed, it helps if you like things that are a little more funny or colorful, but thats whats makes it different too. And that is mainly a problem for some men, I'd say. I quite envy the other sex here, "it's a womans world".
• Phone covers. They have a lot of them, you find stores or stalls in every other street corner.
• Kpop collectibles and CD's. I mean, I'm not even sure I can place the CD's I've bought, but the albums and photbooks that go with some of them makes it worth it, at least for when you don't have some already. And then comes posters, calendars, postcards,keyholders, etc

There are of course lots more that are worth visiting or buying when in Seoul on a one week visit, but this was the things that stuck with me this time.

Thanks everyone who have been reading these small accounts from Seoul. Hopefully I will be back with other travel tales next year. Visiting San Diego, South Africa/Namibia and Seoul have been a cool experience, but each time what is the nicest (truly) is hugging ones family back at home and sleeping in my own bed. Yawn.

Then after a while, the will to travel comes back...

Trip to Seoul: Day 4 - Mechas and Ho's

This travelogue (which starts here) is all fun, but being here on business, I should of course talk about that to and show some pictures:

University of Seoul

Well then, now that is out of they way. ^_^

Later the same day...I hurriedly visited Asias largest underground market, below the big COEX expo. Here I must mention at least a few of the stores that caught my eye. The first was Aniland, a must visit for all Totoro fans (even though they sell alot of other cutesy stuff too):

Sugar rush or what - Christmas AND Totoro!

And the store.

The next was a toy store (didn't remember the name as it didn't matter - it looked rather generic) where I from my swedish point of view noticed some stuff you don't see that often at home. First there where a lot of Mecha (jaoanese fighting robots) building kits:

And then I found this kind of buildning kits where the parts where made of some kind of wood (bamboo?) and it was all different sorts of buildings or vehicles sometimes. Rather neat and detailed.

 Last and certainly not least was the extremely big Bandi and Luni's bookstore, which was maybe the biggest one I've seen, and definitely so in one plane. Just their section of english (ie original) books was  way bigger than I've seen anywhere in Sweden.

A fun thing they had, like miniature lego blocks, each measuring roughly 2-3 mm a side.

Colorful bibles, just a reminder the Koreans actually have a long Christian tradition

After that I just had to pass the nowadays well-known city district of Gangnam, and specifically Rodeo street (there are other more suitable names of streets and such, but G. and R. will do).

Actually it was almost an anticlimax, the main street was more like a row of showfronts and almost no people going in or out. I wouldn't say the place was dead, it wasn't any impressive at all. The best part was actually when I by mistake went up the wrong escalator in the luxiorious subway station and entered a subfloor like the one in Shinsaegae (or Harrods, London) even though this seemed even more special, with waiter-kind of people standing around at food disks or food courts.

Louis Vuitton

SM Town - known to all k-popers. I tried to see something when I seemingly disinterestedly walked by, but of course nothing came up ;-P

And of course a gift-wrapped building.  ^_^

So guess what caught my eye here, then? The master of bad puns inside of me woke up with a start. This was probably the best thing in my 45 min visit in high end Seoul, haha.

And a evening meal, and FINALLY good black tea, with a thick blueberry-filled waffle made on order. All for a quite OK 4800 Won (32 SEK/4,8 $). Add to that a giant spicy sausage bought from a street vendor 10 minutes earlier and they whole sheebang cost me no more than 6600 Won (44 SEK/6,6$), ie like a fast-food meal here in Seoul.

Not so much to tell as the earlier days, but I got to sleep too ;-)