Before leaving for Jamsil, we wanted to send our letters/cards to our beloved friends and family back in Germany. We've found a post office through Google maps nearby.

Sending letters or cards in South Korea is really easy. Pick a number from the machine next to the entry, wait for your number to get announced, then hand over your letters/cards to that friendly employee and tell him or her the destination. You don't have to be an expert in Korean language. "To Germany", or wherever you want to send your letters or cards, is absolutely fine. He or she will give you the needed post stamps and will take care of the rest. That's it.

We went to Lotte World Mall afterwards. To get there, just take the subway to Jamsil Station (Green line) and follow the directional signs that are everywhere but be prepared, Lotte World Mall is really huge and we got lost so many times.
It's divided into two sections. When we went into the first section it only had high-end luxury retailers like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc but the second one was more of my style. You can find a list of every shop/restaurant/etc on Lotte World Mall's official website.
There are also multiple activities you can do inside the mall. If you have time I can suggest you to visit the Lotte Aquarium, which houses over 650 different species and has the largest seawater tank in Korea. They even have beluga whales ♥ The admission fee is 29.000 Won (~23€) for adults.



As soon as it got dark outside we went to Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in Korea standing 555 meters. There's a observation deck (called "Seoul Sky") on top to look out across Seoul and it is the 3rd highest observation deck in the world. The tower also holds the Guinness World Record in regards to having the fastest double-deck elevator (60 seconds to reach the top), the longest distance traveled by this elevator, having the highest glass floor observation desk AND the highest swimming pool.
Sometimes at night, this building pleases people's eyes with beautiful illuminations. However, we didn't see any that day but it was still very impressive, though.

Steps: 12.261

One thing I definitively dislike in Korea and Japan is breakfast. Neither the traditional (rice, soup, fish, chicken etc) nor the "western" breakfast is my thing. The last one consists of toast, jelly and fried egg, probably some orange juice. Compared to German breakfast this is definitively not my thing. I love German "Brötchen" way too much and Asian bread is completely different. Why the hell is almost everything sugared or fatty?

We went to Gangnam some time before noon to shop for some t-shirts or short things in general. In contrast to the weather forecast, Seoul was so much hotter than we had expected it to be. That's why we needed some more summer clothes than the few things we'd packed.
In Gangnam is this huge Underground Shopping Center right next to the Metro station and we thought we could buy some stuff here but we bought anything else than summer outfits. Instead of shirts we bought cute stickers, hilarious face masks, notebooks with kitten on it and so on. Things no one needs but that are way to cute to just leave them behind.



We went back to Myeongdong in the early evening, had japanese Curry and continued our shopping trip at the Myeongdong Underground Shopping Center.

If you want more information about these two underground centers, then check my post from last year (click click) in that I hyperlinked some sites with addresses, operating hours, transportations etc.

Steps: 17.713

I personally try to be prepared for almost everything since I hate sudden surprises. Well not every surprise tends to be bad but when it comes to traveling I think it won't hurt to do some preparations in advance, especially when you travel abroad.

This time I teached myself how to read and write Hangeul (the korean alphabet) before the trip and what should I say? It's really easy to learn and it helped us a lot since Koreans tend to write english words in Hangeul as well. This way we were able to read some menu cards or street signs without asking native speakers.
Locals don't expect you to be an expert in their language but knowing how to say "thanks", "hello" or "sorry" will always be appreciated and helps to make conversations much easier. However, Koreans and Japanese are very friendly to foreigners and try their best to help you out whenever you ask for it.

I also tried to download maps in Google for the trip but neither my friend nor I could save maps from South Korea or Japan on our mobile phone. This was a bit annoying since offline maps would have helped us so much during the trip. Thanks god Google Maps worked nonetheless most of the time but at least in Japan it might be difficult to use it every once in a while, because WiFi there sucks big times! ROAR!

I've made a list of things and places I'd like to see before the trip but we didn't make any use of it. We found it easier and better to act on impulse and used tripadvisor for spontaneous suggestions.

Also, these following Apps were really helpful during the trip. "EUR x JPY" and "EUR x KRW" are currency converter that might be very useful during shopping or at a restaurant. "Tokyo Subway Navigation", "Metro Busan Subway" and "Metro Seoul Subway" are apps that help you to navigate through the jungle of these busy cities. The best thing is that they work online AND offline and come with a full metro map. We used these a lot!


We had some turbulences on board on our way to Seoul. I didn't find it THAT bad but my dad said there must have been a small article in the newspaper about it. Weird. However, we arrived safely in Seoul around 1PM Korean time and thanks to the really nice bus driver, we found our hotel earlier than we had expected. Like I said before, Koreans are very friendly to foreigners and love to help out. Same goes for Japanese people, by the way.

This year we choosed hotels instead of hostels and I would do the same again in future. It's more comfortable to have your own private room and bathroom. I personally didn't like the atmosphere of hostels last year and were quite happy with the cheap hotels we've booked for this trip. The one in Seoul was Hotel Cozy in Myeongdong. The location was absolutely perfect and the room was small but clean and fair. One tiny drawback was the shower. It was really small and once you took a shower you flooded the whole bathroom but all in all Hotel Cozy was absolutely sufficient.

Steps: 11.674