Seoul for the Day: D Museum “Youth” and Itaewon

It starting to see like every time I go to Seoul anticipating a relaxing weekend just hanging out friends, I end up packing roughly 1 million things into one day and practically walking across the entire city.

Yesterday was no exception.

And just to clarify, I’m definitely not complaining. I’m really grateful to my friends who live in Seoul for always showing me the most amazing time and taking me to the coolest places.

My day started off at about 6:30 because I booked my KTX ticket pretty last minute so all the later trains were already full. I left my place at about 7:15, took a bus to the subway station, the subway to the train terminal, and by 9:15 I was pulling into Seoul Station.

I had plans to meet up with my friend at around noon to go to an art exhibit that is really popular these days but I had about 3 hours to kill until then. So I decided to head to Itaewon which is a popular area in Seoul that’s known kind of as the “foreigner” area.

 

I searched online for a few trendy cafe’s that I had heard of and decided I would just go sit in one for a while and finish the blog post that I was working on. But after walking to two of the cafe’s on that list and finding both of them to be closed I started to realize that Itaewon doesn’t really wake up until about 10:30/11:00. None of the coffee shops or stores were open.

So I was left to just kind of wander around for a bit until I could find something that was open.

And eventually I found a little bakery that I could sit in for a bit. I got a tiny pecan pie and a coffee and finished up my blog post.

After that I meet up with my friends and we went to D Museum to see the current exhibit “Youth.”

 

 

I’ve heard about this exhibit some several places and it seems to be the trendy place to go and take pictures in Seoul these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first half of the exhibit was in this area with the neon lights and lots of pictures depicting skate, youth, and tattoo culture.

And the second half was all photography on white walls.

 

 

 

 

Did I mention there were a lot of people taking pictures? Because there were. Visiting popular “hot spots” to take pictures for instagram is something that Korea has down to a science. But who am I to say anything because I had my camera out the whole time as well.

 

 

Despite the crowds it was really interesting and I’m glad that I got to see it.

Our ticket came with a free coffee from the museum cafe so we sat in there for a bit.

 

 

 

After that we went to get pizza.

 

 

I got the “Four Cheese Pizza” which it turns out means that there are only four pieces of cheese of the pizza. Each one of them was a different type of cheese. A little odd but delicious nonetheless.

 

 

Then we decided just to walk around for a while because the weather was lovely. At some point we ended up in the fancy residential neighborhood where all the foreign diplomats live. We passed the residence of the Peruvian Embassy and I got a little nostalgic for Peru. It was really neat to see where they all live.

 

 

After that we needed a little break from walking and decided to get some ice cream and chill for a bit. Once we’d rested our feet enough we decided to venture back out and go to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza. This involved some more walking and busses and when we got there they were preparing for some kind of parade (that we didn’t realize was the same parade we were planning on seeing later in the evening.) There were tons of people and food trucks and things to see so we looked around there for a while.

 

 

 

 

Then we ate dinner and were so tired that absolutely everything anyone said was funny. The food was yummy too. Then it was finally time to go and meet up with our other friends for a festival celebrating Buddha’s birthday. We headed towards that station and found one of the friends we were looking for.

 

 

 

I unfortunately didn’t get very much time at the parade because I had to leave to catch my train back home. Luckily the festival was only two stops away from the train station and by 9:00 I was in my seat headed back to Daejeon.

We walked almost 9 miles in total that day and covered some serious ground considering we had no plans at all to begin with. I’m always thankful to see my friends in Seoul and it’s such a good feeling to be with people who I’ve known for a long time. It helps me reset.

It was exhausting to make the trip there and back all in one day but I’m glad to know that it’s very simple and doable. Despite being completely exhausted I got to see my friends, have a ton of fun, and then be back in my own bed by 11:00 pm. Not a bad day if you ask me.

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re having a good weekend!