South Korea | Hello! Nice to meet you.
안녕하세요! 만나서 반가워요.
Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming about a place you wanted to visit? Spent hours researching, watching videos, making lists of attractions, restaurants, and cafes you could not miss? Watched a movie or a TV show that was set in this place and imagined how it would feel once you were there? Or just got invested in a book and in its characters, that were experiencing the reality you wanted to live? For me, this place was South Korea. And in 2022, my dreams came true.
I visited South Korea for the first time in October of 2022. I knew this would be an unforgettable trip. After all, I spent months dreaming about it, researching it, and planning every single detail of this adventure very carefully.
This trip was important to me for many reasons: I would be visiting Asia for the first time in my life; I did not speak the local language; I would be taking a long overdue vacation and wanted to have a wonderful, exciting, fun, and relaxing time; I would be celebrating my birthday, and I would be finally making a dream come true – to visit South Korea.
I can assure you that I had the most fantastic time in South Korea. How could I not? It was so much more special than I could have ever imagined. What I didn’t know was going to happen was how deeply I would fall in love with this magical country. So much so that I started taking Korean classes, went back in May and in September of 2023, and already have more trips planned for the near future.
DREAMS DO COME TRUE
I’m the kind of person who loves researching about a place as much as I can before going. To me, it feels like I’m slowly connecting to that place. I start imagining scenarios and creating positive expectations about how everything will unfold. Law of attraction, anyone?
I’m also a person who enjoys making lists of places to visit, of restaurants that offer delicious food, trendy cafes, must do tourist attractions, you name it. I personally don’t like having to rush anything, and when it came to South Korea, I made the choice of spending two weeks in Seoul, every time I visited. I wanted to enjoy, relax, and slowly experience its rich culture and everything else it had to offer.
Obviously, two weeks is not nearly enough time to experience an entire country. South Korea has so many interesting cities that I still want to explore. But given the time frame I had, the commitments I had to come back to, and the money I had saved, two weeks felt like the ideal time for me.
I do like planning my days efficiently. However, I’m also a flexible person and I understand that things can happen, plans might slightly change and, to have a good time, it’s best to go with the flow. (There will be days when sleeping in will be the best decision to be made.)
I have a childhood memory of planning trips. To be completely honest, of watching my parents plan our summer vacations. And even though I had no saying in any of it, watching them take time out of their weekends to plan the activities we would do each day, to look for hotel deals, nice restaurants to eat, places to visit, and to remember and laugh about great memories of past trips, was very fun and exciting. After all, I knew that was the beginning of a new adventure and of an unforgettable time.
In a way, this is why I have decided to start this blog. I wanted a place where I could keep all the memories of my past and future trips to South Korea. I also wanted to have a platform where I could help anyone who might be visiting South Korea soon (and those who might not like researching and planning as much as I do) to find relevant and useful information. I will cover every place I have visited so far and will be visiting soon. Come explore South Korea with me!
어서 오세요!