Day 2 - Myeong-dong & Namdaemun Market

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Wed. May 28th

The next day we peeled ourselves out of our really hard, uncomfortable beds at a pretty leisurely pace and headed out to do a little shopping. At this point we hadn't heard anything about my luggage so I figured I needed to buy a few necessities. We decided to head to Myeong-dong (which is supposedly "The undisputed no. 1 shopping district in Seoul") and also explored Namdaemun Market on the way. We decided to head there on foot so we could check out downtown Seoul...a lot of men in really shiny, silver suits and women running (really - running) in heels. It was pretty comical.

The Namdaemun market is an open market that has everything you would ever want and everything you didn't realize you needed/wanted. It was quite overwhelming and we just walked through without really buying anything. We then went into this Fashion Mall...not your typical western mall. Basically each vendor had a cardboard table size area to sell their clothes - all women's clothes - and there was barely enough room between vendors to walk through. Not our style of clothes...and my personal space was being compromised...so we didn't spend much time there. Somewhere between Namdaemun Market and Myeong-dong (not sure where one ended and the other started), Laura found a few pairs of shoes. Shoe vendors were EVERYWHERE!

Myeong-dong was a really neat area. I'm not so sure if it's undisputable though...I haven't fully researched all the shopping areas, yet! This is a much more modern area, with Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, etc. The clothing was much more fashion-forward and unique...Laura and I actually found a store we really liked and walked towards the dressing rooms with at least 10 items to try on. Well - come to find out - they don't allow you to try on anything but jeans. What!!??!! I was utterly confused...how do you buy something if you don't know if it fits? And apparently the refund policy allows you to return items only for store credit. So we walked out empty handed. I haven't wrapped my mind around that concept yet...

At this point Matt is bored beyond belief...so we decided to split up. He went off to explore while Laura and I opted for our first Korean massage! We went into a spa and we were basically treated like queens! I don't know if that's how they treat all their customers or if it was because we were American. Laura and I decided this was the best massage we'd ever had...it was a combination of a normal tissue massage and a stone massage.

We met up with Matt later that evening and started to head back to KoRoot. We stopped for some dinner and I almost went face first into my dumplings. Jetlag was taking over my body...I was SO exhausted. We went back to KoRoot and I passed out.

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Photos

maybe t-shirts?
This was a sign for an underground mall...we've found there are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors...pretty humorous!