Got out of the city as quickly as possible and headed to Nami Island for a great time wandering through a nice tiny little slice of paradise. Set of a K-Drama called Winters Sonata. Ran out of time to go to the Garden of Morning Cwlm, but a beautiful day nonetheless.
Ended day in Seoul wandering around a bit before tomorrow mornings flight to Japan (skipping Beijing cause I didn’t want to bother with paying for and obtaining visa for just two days, and have been to the mainland before so wanted to see something new).
Photo Gallery: https://pics.mattichan.com/-uwc117
Running
Needed to get some steam out so ran very early in the morning to just get the annoyance from yesterday out of my system. Not sure it worked, but a nice run in (angry running for the win).
Arrival at Nami Island
Connected with our guide at the terminal and then made the couple hour drive out of the city to get to Nami Island. Traffic was horrendous, but once we got out of the city it was nice and clear and a blast.
We got to the pier and found the ferry which goes back and forth to the island every 15-30 minutes or so, but we also saw that you could take an elevator up and take a zip line over to the island as well. We thought about it, but tickets and the wait was a couple hours so we took the ferry. It was a lovely ride over with a nice breeze topside.
Nami Island
Cherry Blossoms
Super lucky and great timing, the cherry blossoms were still in full bloom. Will never get tired of looking at them and photographing them.
Other Flowers
But wait. There’s more! Not just cherry blossoms but amazing gardens of flowers all over the place as we wandered the island for a couple hours.
Wildlife
It wasn’t all just flowers though either. Some really awesome bird watching as well and other tiny wildlife including some very different looking squirrels (than the ones we see back home).
Garden Views
It also wasn’t just all nature, there was a bunch of walking paths, ponds, bridges and some amphitheaters. I can absolutely see this being an awesome set for a K-Drama.
Winter Sonata
Some of the iconic scenes from the drama involved a snowman so they were everywhere around which was a lot of fun as well. The one thing I miss from home (aside from the people obviously) is not having a ton of snow this year since I was on the ship.
Heading Back
On the ferry ride back we got to relax a bit and take in some last views of the island. Definitely would come back and see the Garden of Morning Calm. According to our guide, I could easily spend a couple hours there.
Seoul / Incheon
We ended the tour and headed back to Incheon to drop off Nate and mom at the ship before the guide was kind enough to drop me off at my AirBnB for the night.
My AirbnB was super well situated right by the airport with a mall right across the street. I got in to find a comfy little studio with slippers that were clearly not going to fit me 🤣. Great views of the city from there though.
Mall
Night Views
Ventured over to the mall to scavenge for food and got distracted by some great views with no one around. Enjoyed myself for a bit just taking the side of the city in.
Pokémon
Found all sorts of Pokémon stuff in the mall in a combo Toys-R-Us and LotteMart.
Pop Up Lego Store
There was also a Lego store with a pop up display further into the mall with some neat travel related displays and sets for sale. Felt appropriate on the world cruise to find travel Legos. Particularly liked the ones in the airplane windows.
Food
Went scavenging for food in the mall, but everything was in Korean and by the time I settled on where to eat I went to the restaurant to find that they weren’t seating people an hour prior to close and everything was closing. Ended up walking around for a couple hours, trying to get a food delivery service to work…Uber Eats wouldn’t recognize the address — or was just having some glitches, and then two korean delivery apps wouldn’t work either — one cause it didn’t deliver past 8pm, and the other was all in Korean and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Ended up just bailing and walking to McDonalds.
Vibe Check
5 parts joy
Feedback
Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!
Matti 
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