Nightlife
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The Last Korean Road Trip: Adventures in Busan
Welcome to the next leg of our final road trip! To recap: with a year to spend in South Korea, our goal was to see as much of the country as possible. We planned our last big road trip for the major holiday week of Buddha’s birthday. Making several stops, we covered some well-known sites we hadn’t visited yet: Songnisan National Park, Andong Hahoe Folk Village, and the city of Busan. The weather unfortunately was not on our side. Indeed, this was hands-down the rainiest vacation we have ever taken, with significant rainfall on six out of seven days of traveling. In this post, we visit Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, about a…
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A Night to Remember at Gyeongbokgung Palace
If you’ve been following along with our adventures, you might recall that we have visited Gyeongbokgung Palace twice already: once in the summer and then in the fall. Well, the third time may be the charm! We visited in December for a special nighttime, winter walk. Thanks to one of Peter’s SNU colleagues, we learned that Gyeongbokgung is open several times a year at night. We were told that Koreans often have to book tickets for these evenings months in advance, but luckily for us a certain number of tickets are set aside for foreigners to purchase on-site. We presented our Alien Registration Cards at the gate and were allowed…
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Have Yourself a Merry, Distanced Christmas!
Learning how another culture celebrates a big holiday such as Christmas is one of the most exciting and also one of the more challenging elements of living in a different country. Somehow, in years past the chemist and I always have managed to be with at least most of our families at Christmas. Ah, memories of Christmases pre-social distancing! This year, the presence of COVID and the need to quarantine when traveling made it impossible to consider returning to the U.S. for the holidays. Not to mention, even if we were in the U.S. we would be staying put at home, as we know many of you are doing. We…
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How to Have a Cheap Date Night: Street Food for the Win!
My favorite thing in basically every city is to see it at night. The colors and the lights make everything so vivid, and I love the nighttime energy. Seoul’s neon vibe and large shopping districts lend themselves to evening strolls and people-watching. Added bonus: avoid the scorching sun and terrible August humidity! Over a couple of nights, we enjoyed an evening stroll to one of Seoul’s largest shopping districts, enjoyed several of Seoul’s many riverside parks, and most importantly – found some famous street food. As soon as we saw Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) during the day, we knew we wanted to see it at night. We were not disappointed!…
