The Road to 40 Day 166/365: Seoul Day One

We’re back in one of our favorite countries for a three-part vacation.

This is a pretty long trip that has been planned for months, but really took shape over the past few weeks.

In April, the girls came home from their trip to announce that we will all go to South Korea, including the kids. There were plenty of events that transpired in between, but finally, we were able to lay down the actual plans over these recent weeks.

For us, this trip was going to happen regardless of whether we had other people coming or not. Vino is on school break, and this is the first time Che is really going to take a break from work this year. We’ve had trips to the Philippines, but she’s been working there too.

This part of the journey will just be the three of us. On Saturday, the Team will come with the kids until November 1st. Che’s sisters will arrive on the 29th, so at some point this will be one big group trip for us.

We arrived early morning in Incheon and arranged for a pickup. Klook offered cheaper options than hotel transfers, so we took that. There were airport limos, but we had three big bags, two small bags, and a growing boy who had just about five hours of sleep in the plane, so this was a better option for us.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t check in yet, as the hotel was fully booked the day before, so we needed to wait for people to check out. We waited at the cafe in the hotel to pass the time.

We hoped to get a room by 12 noon, but we were told that it still might take a while. I researched cafes nearby because Che asked me to do the itenirary for this leg of the trip. While doing it, I looked back on past experiences and decided to just list off places we could go to without setting a time for them.

I get frustrated when we’re not able to pull off planned things at their proper timings. With consideration to Vino’s stamina, I thought it would be wise to avoid exact timings and just go with what we can do based on the time we have for the day.

On my initial list, we were supposed to walk around the neighborhood to a cafe that was open before 10am. But since we all did not get enough sleep, we decided not to walk too far, especially since this is our first day. So we went to the nearby mall to find some food.

We got sidetracked a lot while looking for a place to eat, but we did end up at a nice food court at the seventh floor of the mall. Vino initially wanted ramen, but since we’re in Korea, we thought it would be best for him to try Korean food.

Che got some bulgogi pork with rice to share with Vino, while I got a vegetarian bibimbap with a side of steamed eggs that Vino likes.

I love bibimbap, but it’s too much work to make. There are plenty of elements to it, which makes washing of the dishes and the prep not really worth it for one go. The other option is making all the elements and just storing them in the fridge to pull out whenever we want it.

After finishing our meal, we walked back to check in to the hotel and rest a bit in the room. We had nothing planned yet, so we decided to visit Nodeul Island nearby.

I got to know this place because it was featured as the location of the offices of Sandbox, the fictional company for startup companies in the K-Drama series Start-Up. I listed it as one of the places I wanted to visit the last time we were here, but it was a bit far off from where we stayed at.

This time, it was just a couple of bus stops away from us. However, both Che and Vino were hungry already, so we took a cab to go straight there.

While in the cab, Vino fell asleep. We asked him to walk because we were at the island already, and he kept saying he was hungry. We went to a pizza place and ordered some food. While waiting literally less than 10 minutes for the food, Vino fell asleep on the chair.

We tried to wake him up, but he wouldn’t budge. The food arrived, and I cut the pizza up for him so he can easily eat it, but he just wouldn’t wake up. We had our beer, pizza, and pasta while his head rested on my shoulder.

Che was tired as well, so she was looking forward to getting home after our meal. Since I was the one who wanted to go to the island, she said maybe I could walk around while she let Vino sleep in the restaurant.

I didn’t have any expectations on this island. I don’t even know where to take photos that were seen in the series. But I loved to walk, and this looked like a nice place to do that.

I went high to take a photo from the second-floor, but that didn’t really capture the whole island. I had to walk down to see the edge, where a lot of people were taking selfies and having picnics.

There weren’t a lot of pictures to take since it was dark, but the experience of it was nice. I didn’t have my headphones on, so I could hear the traffic and the trains.

For me, the best way to experience it is to run a few laps on the island, then have a picnic near the edge of the island with a night view of the bridges on the left and watching the trains pass by on the right.

There were two art galleries downstairs, a chicken and beer place, a library, and a shop that sells snacks and ramyun, complete with hot water dispensers for your snacking needs. On the same floor of the pizza place was a German butchery, a cafe, and a kimbap place.

After getting my walk on, I went back to see Vino still sleeping. We planned on taking a cab so that he can just rest, but there was a bit of traffic and our place was relatively near.

We crossed a footbridge to have a better shot at getting a ride, but to no avail. We then decided to just take the bus.

It was a short trip, but we needed two different buses to get to our place. Through this whole ordeal, I had to carry the sleeping Vino in my arms.

When we arrived at the hotel, I dropped him off the bed and within two minutes, he was up and running again. I stuck myself on the chair and refused to move for a bit.

I then had to go down to buy some water. We only had two bottles of water in the room and no potable tap. While In the process of getting water, I picked up some snacks and some booze.

We capped the night off with this G-Dragon product, an orange and a lime highball, I believe. I say this because there’s a slice of each fruit in our cans.

We watched Bon Apetit, Your Majesty until we can’t. We got Vino a sofa bed for him to sleep in, but he cheekily made his way to our bed and announced he would sleep with us.

Our first day ended with all of us in the same bed, just like always. I hope these are the parts of the trip and his childhood that Vino remembers when he grows up.