Day 6

PICTURES WILL BE ADDED LATER

 

Today was really an interesting day! We went to COEX Aquarium, and it took us around an hour to go through the entire place! It was huge! There were piranhas, sharks, stingrays, penguins, manatees, otters, even a crocodile and much, much more! The most surprising animals were fruit bats though, since those were the last thing I would expect to see in an aquarium!

 

In the evening we went to Dongdaemun again to check out Maxstyle, which apparently is a quite new shopping mall since it looks like it’s still under construction when there are loads of empty spaces on every floor, but it proved to be a great place to visit nonetheless! I finally found myself some shoes and an amazing jacket to say the least! Now I only need to find some jeans and I can say that I’ve found everything that I wanted to when we came here. That has proved to be a bit of a problem though, since my calves are huge compared to the locals, so I can’t get any jeans to fit…the last time I tried a pair of jeans I couldn’t get them even past my foot!

 

Oh yea, we’ve already spent the 500e we changed to won yesterday…ehehe, good thing I can use my Visa Electron here to draw out cash from the ATM’s…

 

On day 7 our only plan so far is to go visit the Deoksugung Palace right next to our hotel. And I still need to back to Sogong Underground Shopping Center to get a necktie for my grandpa.

Day 5

PICTURES WILL BE ADDED LATER

This morning I went to watch the Deoksugung Palace Royal Guard-Changing Ceremony. It was really fancy with lots of banners and flags and people in bright-colored clothing. We had already spent all our cash that we exchanged back in Finland so we exchanged 500e more so we could shop just a little bit more.

We spent the day shopping in Doota mall in Dongdaemun, and in the evening we went for a short shopping spree in Myeongdong again, and later took a walk around the city hall area and found yet another underground shopping mall. All the shops were closed though since it was so late..We also spent some time at the Cheonggyecheon stream, but I didn’t bring my camera with my there unfortunately, so no pictures from there unless we go back in day 7.

I’m really starting to get worried about the amount of stuff we’ve bought so far. Hopefully our bags won’t be overweight!

I really should just update the blog either the same day or in the next morning and not 2 days after just so I could remember more than just parts of the day… Apologies for the short post for day 5!

Day 4

PICTURES WILL BE ADDED LATER!

 

We were in Myeongdong the entire day, again, because Sara wanted to go back to Forever21. I also managed to persuade Sara to go to N Seoul Tower at like 21.00, and the highlight of the entire day came after we got back to our hotel from the tower; we got engaged! We’d been in a relationship for exactly 2 years and 3 months today (12th) so I’d been planning this for the past 3 months or so. This is also the main reason why I chose this luxury hotel for our trip~. Oh yea, it also RAINED for the first time during our trip and we decided to take shelter in a nearby Starbucks, making it the first visit to a Starbucks for the both of us!

 

The past 4 days have been really busy for us. We’ve been shopping almost all the time, and today I finally found Gatsby face care and hair products! I didn’t want to get greedy at first and bought only 1 grey and one pink hair wax, but now I’m starting to feel like I should’ve bought a lot more because that’s something that can’t be found anywhere in Finland..! While we were there Sara also noticed an ad for a clothing line from K-popstar Hyuna, and I saw that the ad was actually on the window of the store that the clothes were in, so we proceeded to go in and ended up with Sara getting herself a pair of pumps from Hyuna’s line for 89.000 won (10k is about 7.5e). My search for shoes is really starting to get desperate now, we’ve got 3 days left to shop and I still haven’t found any shoes for myself..! Not to mention jeans… The only things I’ve found so far have been shirts, hair products and other cosmetics and it’s driving me a bit crazy! Where is all the cool stuff that Yesstyle.com has?!

 

The trip to N Seoul Tower was an interesting one. It was a ~20min walk from our hotel to the elevator which took us to the cable car which then would take us almost to the top of Namsan Mountain where N Seoul Tower is. We could really feel the cable car swinging in the wind and Sara was a bit scared of it at first, but she seemed to get used to it eventually. The tower was something I’ve never seen before. It even had this cool show projected straight onto the tower on set intervals still unknown to me. All the elevators also had a screen on their roofs, and as the elevator started to go up the staff member inside the elevator prompted everyone to look to the roof. As the elevator began to move, the elevator was filled with this action movie-type music and the screen ”showed” us going up and through the roof of the tower straight into space, and as we came down we ”left from space” and then landed back on earth as the elevator came to a halt. The way up with the elevator is about 200m or something like that, and from ground to the top it took only like 10 to 15 seconds! The view from the tower was spectacular, and every window had at least one or two city names on them and the distance in km from the tower to that city. We even found Helsinki, and of course took pictures of us at the window!

 

That wraps up Day 4, updates may come eventually, just like day 3, but now we’re in a hurry to get out of the hotel as it’s 15.00 already and we still haven’t done anything today because we’ve been awake for only 3 hours……..!

Day 3

PICTURES WILL BE ADDED LATER

 

We were in COEX the entire day! We got most of our souvenir gifts as well so we don’t have to look for anything special anymore, and can  just focus on what we want now. Our ”most important” find of the day was Evan Records, I bought like 5 CD’s from there and I’m still missing a ”few” records that I couldn’t find there, such as Heartbreaker, and all but the 1st album from 2NE1. We also found a store full of Hello Kitty stuff. It had everything from keyboard stickers to umbrellas, mugs, toothbrushes and even shoes and other clothes! We’ve managed to spend like almost half of our budget already, but thankfully I decided to take more euros with us just in case we would need more cash because we’d been shopping too much!

 

The metro ride to COEX took around 30 minutes, and we even got to sit almost the entire trip. At first we were at the wrong line (2), and when we couldn’t find the right station there Sara made the call to go back to the hotel to check the route. It was then that I noticed that we were on the wrong line when we were supposed to take line 1 to Samseong station instead. (Sara then pointed out to me that she vaguely remembered that it was line 1 we were supposed to take and not 2).

 

While we were there we managed to gather enough shopping bags to make it kinda awkward to visit the COEX Aquarium, so we decided that we’re going to do a new trip there and then visit the aquarium, and also go to Evan Records again to search for the other CD’s! Apart from the multiple CD’s I also found myself a shirt. It sucks that I can barely find anything for myself compared to Sara who already has bought like 5 pairs of shoes, with the newest addition being from a K-popstar Hyuna’s personal line.

 

We’re most likely going to skip visiting Lotte World by the way, since unfotunately Sara doesn’t like amusement parks that much.. And the DMZ trip is still under consideration, we’ve been shopping so much that we haven’t managed to visit any sights other than COEX.

 

That wraps up Day 3 for now, I’ll probably add something more to this post later as it’s 2.17 in the morning as I’m writing this and I need to get to bed so we can wake up early tomorrow (day 5 here). I’ll probably add day 4 before we leave to Dongdaemun tomorrow.

Day 2

We woke up quite early and, because we were lazy, ordered breakfast to our room… Fried eggs with ham and croissants plus some butter, marmelade, honey and strawberry jam, orange juice and tea. Talk about a luxury breakfast! The only downside to it was that the egg yolk was left ”loose” inside the egg white which was fried from both sides (some fancy cooking, eh?).

We spent the entire day shopping yet again. Mostly in Myeongdong, and especially in Forever21. With a nation that seems to be obsessed about their skin, it’s no surprise that Myeongdong is PACKED with all kinds of skincare shops from lots of different brands such as Etude House, Holika Holika, The Body Shop, The Face Shop and many more. And every place has one or two people outside with these freebies that you get when you go into the shop and buy something. We got like 15 different freebies from the stores, but all of the freebies which were in boxes were filled with small pieces of cotton just to make it feel like there was something inside. Why? I’ve no idea. Possibly to lure more people in with the idea that they would actually get a full-size sample of something for free if they bought something from the store.

We’ve been walking so much in these past 2 days that both of us already have lower back pain. I’m not sure, but in my case at least I think it might be because of the shoes I use. I could be wrong but tomorrow (day 4 here) I’m testing the last pair of shoes that I haven’t used here if that would help with the pain, since I had this similar problem a few years back when I was on a class trip in Rome.

This was a rather short one, but this concludes our 2nd day here in Korea, stay tuned for day 3, we visited the COEX mall!

Day 1

PICTURES WILL BE ADDED LATER!

We had an awesome day yesterday! The morning on the other hand wasn’t too great.. We got almost no sleep in the plane (Sara got some, I didn’t get any), and I felt really sick for the last two hours of the flight. They served us breakfast in the plane 2 hours before we landed, but I couldn’t eat anything because I felt like I couldn’t keep anything inside me, and unfortunately, I was right… 1½ before we landed I had to go to the toilet because I felt way too sick…..

We arrived to Korea at around 8.30 local time, the immigration was surprisingly fast, taking us only about 15 minutes from getting to the queue to passing immigration! The woman behind the counter even chuckled at my passport picture when she first took a look at it (I’m 15 in that picture….). After immigration we went straight to pick up our bags, and suprisingly enough, it didn’t take any more than 5 minutes from when we arrived to the baggage claim area that we were ready to leave. Talk about fast service!

Then our next challenge was to find the KAL Limousine Bus desk from this huge airport 3 times the size of Helsinki-Vantaa. Good thing we had wi-fi available so it didn’t take us too long to find it. 15.000 won per person for the ride in a bus with huge, soft leather seats and air conditioning isn’t too bad, don’t you think? Upon arriving to the hotel at around 10.00 we were told that our room wasn’t ready yet, and that check-in was at 14.00, so we left our biggest bags to the hotel to store until we got our room, and headed for Myeongdong to take a look around. It’s kinda funny, that we just got to Korea, and the FIRST clothing store we went into was H&M! We walked around the place for almost two hours before our hunger and tiredness got the best of us and we decided to go back to the hotel for the last 2 hours until our room would be ready.

At exactly 14.00 when I went to ask if our room was ready, we were told that they still had to clean it up and that it would take around 15 minutes, so we got 2 free soft drink tickets to the lounge & bar at the hotel’s ground floor. Sara got herself a caramel latte or something like that and I got myself an iced green tea, both priced at around 13.000 won. After our drinks we went to pick up the keys for our room, and after getting to our room, we unpacked a bit and ordered some food to our room because we hadn’t eaten anything since the breakfast in the plane (I couldn’t eat the breakfast so I hadn’t eaten for a good 12 hours) and couldn’t bother with trying to find a cheap place around the hotel. Our meals ended up costing us around 82.000won, Sara got a New York-style cheeseburger with fries (the minced meat steak in the hamburger was HUGE) and I got a 200g grilled han-woo striploin steak with fries and salad. After we ate we had to go to bed because of the jetlag as we got barely any sleep in the plane. We slept for around 2 hours and woke up at 19.00.

After waking up we set up a date with my friend Monica at around 21.40 and went for a walk in the Namdaemun area. Most of the stores were closed though, but there were some street stalls open selling fake Louis Vuitton bags and wallets, fake Ed hardy Clothes and other cool stuff. Monica had to leave at 23.00 because the subways were closing, and we decided to take the same subway with her and go to Dongdaemun. The subways are surprisingly easy to use after you manage to get yourself a T-Money card and can figure out the signs on the walls and roof telling you where to go. When we got there, the first thing I noticed in front of Doota shopping mall was that the spotlights pointing at the mall were swarming with moths, and the ground was filled with moth carcasses when people walked over them. Not the most pleasant sight to be honest, but the mall was like nothing I’ve ever seen. The floors were huge and each floor had at least some kind of coffee shop or eatery in it. Unfortunately the top floors were closed because it was so late, so we couldn’t get to the food gallery or the roof garden. At the end of the night we went to Dunkin’ Donuts to grab a fast snack and then headed for home. It’s really hard to get a taxi around here (at least for a tourist), and the first few taxis I tried to get for us didn’t even know our hotel for some reason (not like it’s hard to find when it’s right opposite to the city hall….). After a good 10 minutes or so we finally got into a taxi, and the driver was kind enough to pull over at the start and tell us that it was a black taxi (a ”luxury” taxi with more space) and as it was past midnight already the ride would be expensive, around 20.000 won. The service from the driver was impeccable…why don’t we have service like this in Finland?! When we got to our room it was already 1.15, and Sara summarized our evening quite well with a single sentence ”it’s 1.15 in the middle of the night and we just came from shopping..!”.

That wraps up day 1, stay tuned for day 2 tomorrow!

Why it’s been so quiet

So, I haven’t written here because I also have my own personal blog which I’ve been busy with, not to mention all the other stuff that I’ve had to do in the past month. I’ll be focusing more on this blog during our trip though, so you can expect updates during the next 10 days or so!

 

We’ve already started packing, and I still have some stuff to cut from what I’ve packed already, just so I have enough room for all the new stuff I’ll be buying while we’re there..! I’m also finally starting to feel a bit nervous and excited about the trip, and most of all, the flight. It’s been a good while since I’ve last been in an airplane, and it’s always the same thing, I’m all nervous and excited about it until we reach the cruising altitude. That’s when it just starts to get tedious at best.. At least there’s a lot to do in this flight because I can bring my laptop there, not to mention the in-flight entertainment system! The 8-9 hour flights should go by quickly when I have something to do.

 

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Joo, on jäänyt tänne kirjottelu vähän välistä kun olen aloittanut henkilökohtasen blogin kirjottamisen kanssa, ja myös muiden kiireiden takia viimeisen kuukauden aikana. Tulen keskittymään enimmäkseen tähän blogiin seuraavan 10 päivän ajan, joten silloin voi odotella päivityksiä** ja kuvia!

 

Ollaan jo aloitettu pakkaaminen Saran kanssa, ja minulla on vielä paljon karsittavaa matkalaukustani, jotta siellä on tarpeeksi tilaa kaikille ostoksille, jota tulemme Koreassa tekemään..!

 

**Tässä vaiheessa joudun kuitenkin tekemään teille, englantia taitamattomille lukijoille epämiellyttävän päätöksen. Nimittäin koko blogi tulee olemaan, ainakin tästä lähtien, pelkästään englanniksi, ellen jossain vaiheessa reissun jälkeen jaksa lähteä kääntämään tekstejä. Nimittäin jo pelkästään yhden tekstin kirjoittamiseen englanniksi, ja sen kääntämiseen edelleen suomeksi, kuluu aivan liikaa aikaa. Ja seikkailen mielummin Korean yöelämässä tai teen jotain muuta, kuin istun tunnin koneella väsäämässä yhtä päivitystä kahdelle kielelle.

1 month to go!

Good morning everyone!

Now, there’s a month, or well, 30 days to go until our trip! The excitement still keeps building up slowly, but I think the real excitement won’t hit me until my summer vacation starts on June 6th. I’ve been studying a lot of korean lately, and hopefully I’m able to reach my goal of being able to have a basic conversation in korean before we arrive there.

I’ve managed to get some practice with my new 600D, so the pictures from the trip won’t end up looking like a huge mess!

There’s really not that much for me to say right now since I’d almost forgotten about posting to this blog so I’ll end this post here.

I’ll now try to do a weekly post to this blog, and during our trip there’ll be at least 1 post per day.

As a final note, do remember to go and vote for what you would like to see most in this blog here!

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Huomenta vaan kaikille!

Nyt olisi sitten enää kuukausi, tai no, 30 päivää jäljellä reissun alkuun! Jännitys jatkaa vieläkin hiljalleen kasvuaan, mutta luulisin, että se iskee kunnolla vasta kesälomani alussa, 6.6.  Olen opiskellut aika paljonkin koreaa viimeaikoina, ja toivottavasti myös yllän asettamaani tavoitteeseen, eli pystyisin keskustelemaan edes jotenkin koreaa käyttäen ennenkuin saavumme sinne.

Olen onnistunut saamaan hieman harjoitusta 600D:ni kanssa, joten reissukuvista ei todennäköisimmin tulekaan mitään sotkua!

Tällä hetkellä minulla ei ole kauheasti sanottavaa, kun vasta äskettäin muistin, että tätäkin blogia pitäisi päivittää, joten päätän tämän päivityksen tähän!

Yritän nyt aloittaa blogin viikottaisen päivittämisen, ja reissumme aikana päivityksiä tulee vähintäänkin 1 päivässä.

Lopuksi, muistakaa toki käydä äänestämässä mitä haluaisitte nähdä eniten tässä blogissa täällä!

2 months to go!

Good evening everyone! So, I’ve been misinformed, and thus I’ve also misinformed you a bit. Our hotel isn’t close to the COEX mall, unlike what I read from a few sources, but instead it’s a half-hour subway trip to the place! Oh well, I guess I should check up on the information I write about from more than one or two sources before I publish it..

Aanyhow, it’s now just a day under 2 months until our plain leaves from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport at 17.30, and lands at Incheon International Airport at 8.20 local time on the next day. The past month, since we reserved the flights and the hotel has gone by really fast! The butterflies are slooowly starting to gather up in my stomach as the date of departure approaches, even though it’s still two months until we leave!

I also managed to sell my old Canon EOS 350D last night, and now I can finally buy myself the 600D I’ve been longing for for so long! (actually, I’ve ordered the 600D plus a Sandisk 16gb Ultra SDHC memory card. At least I shouldn’t run out of free space while shooting in the city). I’ve still yet to buy myself a camera bag and an extra battery, both which I’ll most likely buy during this week. Now, the only problem is to get the camera bag with me to the plane as hand luggage, when I already have my bag where I can just fit my laptop and the necessities. I’ve contacted the Finnair about it, and I was told that the ultimate say in the matter is with the staff at boarding. I wouldn’t want to risk fitting both my laptop, 600D, 2 objectives plus the rest of the accessories and necessities to the same bag in case of any air pockets..

 

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Iltaa vaan kaikille! Meikäläiselle on käynyt pieni moka, olen kertonut, että COEX mall olisi aivan hotellimme vieressä, vaikka se oikeasti onkin noin puolen tunnin metromatkan päässä hotellista! Noh, pitäisi vissiin tarkistaa useammasta lähteestä kerralla, ennen kuin lähtee julkaisemaan tietoja..

Jokatapauksessa, nyt on päivä vajaa 2 kuukautta siihen, kun meidän koneemme lähtee Helsinki-Vantaan lentokentältä klo 17.30, ja laskeutuu Incheon International Airportille klo 8.20 seuraavana päivänä paikallista aikaa. Nopeasti se kuukausi lentojen ja hotellin varaamisesta on vierähtänyt! Perhoset alkavat hiiiljalleen kerääntymään vatsaan lähtöpäivän lähestyessä, vaikka siihen onkin vielä se kaksi kuukautta!

Sain myös myytyä vanhan Canon EOS 350D:ni eilen illalla, ja nyt voin vihdoinkin ostaa sen 600D:n jonka perään olen haikaillut jo niin pitkään! (oikeastaan olen jo tilannut sen kameran plus Sandiskin 16gb Ultra SDHC muistikortin. Eipähän pitäisi loppua tila kesken kaupungilla kuvatessa!). Olen vielä todennäköisimmin tämän viikon aikana ostamassa myös uuden kameralaukun sekä vara-akun. Ainoana ongelmana koko hommassa on kameralaukun saaminen mukaan käsimatkatavarana, kun minulla on jo kohtuullisen kokoinen laukku, johon läppärini ja muut tarpeelliset asiat juuri ja juuri mahtuvat. Olen jo kysellyt Finnairilta asiasta, ja sieltä vastattiin että boarding tiskin henkilökunnalla on lopullinen sana asiaan. En kuitenkaan haluaisi riskeerata sekä läppärini, kamerani, 2 objektiivin sekä muiden lisätarvikkeiden ja tarpeellisten tavaroiden mahduttamista samaan laukkuun ilmakuoppien johdosta..

A few vaccinations and a preliminary itinerary..

So, I got my first vaccinations against hepatitis A and B, and also a new polio shot today. I don’t know why people keep saying that the hepatitis shot hurts a lot, when my right shoulder in which I got the polio shot is still sore, and I don’t feel a thing in my left shoulder where I got the hepatitis shot!

I’ve also made a preliminary itinerary for our trip, although it doesn’t cover every day of our trip, and I don’t have any dates set for the activities yet.. Anyhow, we’re going to visit at least Dongdaemun market, Namdaemun market, Lotte World (world’s 2nd largest indoor amusement park, falling second only to Ferrari World Abu Dhabi) and it’s shopping mall and department store, COEX mall (Asia’s largest underground shopping mall), Cheonggyecheon stream, and possibly Seoul Grand Park Zoo. We’re also going to see the Deoksugung Palace Royal Guard-Changing Ceremony, which should be a quite interesting event.

I’m also trying to sell my old camera (the Canon mentioned in the first post of this blog) in order to get a slightly better EOS 600D before our trip to get even better pictures during the dark hours of the evening, night and morning (I hear that shopping in the wee hours of the night is an interesting experience).

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Nyt on sitte otettu eka rokote hepatiitti A:ta ja B:tä vastaan. Kaupan päälle laittoivat vielä jo vanhentuneen poliorokotteenkin. En tajua, miksi ihmiset kertovat, että hepatiittirokotteen ottaminen sattuisi, kun oikeaan olkapäähäni, johon sain poliorokotteen, jomottaa vieläkin, mutta vasempaan olkapäähäni, johon tuo hepatiittirokote tökättiin, ei satu ollenkaan!

Olen myös tehnyt alustavan matkasuunnitelman reissullemme, tosin se ei kata vielä kaikkia päiviä, eikä millekkään ”retkistämme” ole vielä asetettu tarkkaa päivämäärää. Kuitenkin, aiomme käydä vähintäänkin seuraavissa paikoissa: Dongdaemun market, Namdaemun market, Lotte World (maailman toiseksi suurin sisähuvipuisto, joka häviää koossa ainoastaan Ferrari World Abu Dhabille) ja sen ostoskeskus sekä tavaratalo, COEX mall (Aasian suurin maanalainen ostoskeskus), Cheonggyecheon virta, ja mahdollisesti myös Seoul Grand Park Zoo. Menemme myös katsomaan Deoksugung palatsin Royal Guard-Changing seremoniaa, jonka on luultavimmin aika mielenkiintoinen tapahtuma.

Yritän myös saada kamerani myytyä (se vanha Canon, joka mainitaan blogin ensimmäisessä postauksessa), jotta saisin ostettua hieman paremman EOS 600D:n ennen reissuamme, jotta saisin parempia kuvia illan, yön ja aamun pimeimpinä tunteina (shoppailureissu aamuyön pikkutunneille asti on kuulemma aika mielenkiintoinen kokemus).