Day 29 | Seoul (Flight Day)

Sunday 10 November, 2024

Missed the previous post? Check it out here

We are flying out today but have enough time to do a few things before heading to the airport.

We take a walk to Coex mall and head to ‘You are what you eat’ for lunch.

It’s a super cute plant-based cafe that also sells take away meals and merch.

We order the Italian bologna sub, avocado cob salad and an extra side of fries with plant based luncheon meat (spam).

The food is really good, but the best thing was the fries. They are probably the best fried potato of any type we’ve ever had. Worth going just for the fries!

And because Spam is quite popular in South Korea, they even sell plant-based lunch meat gift sets, which many locals gift to each other during Chuseok (Korean Christmas).

We then head back to Gangnam and head to Golfzon Park for some screen golf with Jimmy.

We stop for a coffee at Banapresso before heading to the airport.

There are two main options for getting to Incheon airport: subway or airport bus. The subway is cheaper at around 4,500 won but takes longer, while the bus is more direct so it’s faster (traffic pending) but costs quite a bit more at 17,000 won.

As we make our way home these are a few thoughts to take back from all our trips to South Korea:

• The locals will appreciate any Korean you attempt to speak, no matter how poorly you speak it.
• Cycling in both Japan and South Korea are very similar in that they are both safe, accessible and the landscape is beautiful. However, the cycling infrastructure in South Korea is next level and makes cycling so easy. With exclusive cycleways everywhere you don’t have to worry so much about traffic and can enjoy the scenery so much more.
• Be prepared to carry your trash with you in Seoul as the streets rarely have public trash cans anywhere.
• 10pm seems to be the optimal time to drink coffee in Korea. And even if it’s freezing cold outside, an iced americano will be preferred over a hot latte.
• The best bakery in all South Korea (that we’ve been to) is ‘Green House Bakery’ in Mokpo.
• Credit cards are accepted virtually everywhere in Korea so the amount of cash you’ll need is minimal. However the opposite is true in Japan where cash is still king, although we have noticed a few more places starting to accept cards in the past few years.
• In Japan, there’s an awesome service where you can courier your luggage to your next hotel. This came in extremely handy when we decided to send our panniers to our final stop and saved us having to cycle them up several steeps hills over the next week.

We’ve really enjoyed this trip and hope you can join us on the next one.

다음에 또 만나요! (See you next time!)