It's Namsan, Nam sayin?

SEOUL | DAY 02

-MORNING HIKE-

In the morning, I woke up early this time – finally. I got triangle kimbap for breakfast from GS25 on the way to Hongdae metro station. I got on the train 8am-ish, and it wasn’t crowded at all on the train.

I got off at Hee-hyeon Metro Station (회현) – Exit 4 and walked toward the Millennium Seoul Hilton hotel. Once I saw the hotel, I crossed the street and kept walking up the Sowol-ro on the right.

At first, I wasn’t really sure if I went to the right direction because it was as if I was walking around the Namsan mountain instead of going up. I got really tired; that’s why I was worried about going the wrong way. Seriously, not working out for two weeks does affect your fitness.

There was a father-daughter couple who were walking in front of me, looking like they came here for a morning hike also, but they turned walked up the stairs on my left instead of walking the long Sowol-ro like I did.

I was too stubborn to follow them and kept walking up the steep hill. When I appraoched a T-junction, I walked up the stairs on the left toward the Sowol-ro 3. Later, I found out that those stairs the father daughter was walking up to leads to Baek Boem Park which is another interesting place to stop by, but no regrets, I was too tired to do that.

I saw someone walking up the stairs on the right side of the tunnel, so I decided to follow him. I crossed the road and walked up, again.

When I found a parking lot, I walked toward the big building in front of me and just followed one family up Namsan. I suggest going up early in the morning to avoid the crowd. That was my goal, seriously: to avoid the crowd as much as possible. I walked up the stairs. Few hundreds I walked up, I believe. One nice thing about the trail is that the path was all paved, so you don’t have to worry about getting your shoes covered with dirt.

There were several observation decks along the way where you can take a little break and fuel yourself with some panoramic views of Seoul.

N. Seoul Tower seemed not too far away now! Just a few more minutes! Leggo!

FINALLY, I got up to the top where the N.Seoul Tower is. It was around 10am when I got there, and there weren’t too many people, so I got to linger around taking pictures a little bit. I went to check out the observation deck where I could see the whole landscape of Seoul with Bukhan Mt. in the background. I’ve been up the tower twice already, so I decided to not go up again. You don’t have to go up the tower to get a nice view of Seoul, but it wouldn’t hurt to experience it.

If you are a kind of person who wants no one in the pictures, I suggest going up earlier because even though it was not too crowded there, I still had to wait a little bit to get a clean shot of the Octagonal Pavillion (북악 팔각정).

There were still some trees with orange and red leaves. From the pictures, they look fake, but I swear I did make sure that it was real, but who knows…

I got bored and was in need of coffee, so I went inside the Seoul Tower plaza, but of course, nothing was open. The mall was still closed, but since it’s an open door-ish mall with a lot of balconies, I could just walk in. The deck was basically mine #WAHAHA

It was nice and quiet inside. From here, you see the Han river and the south side of Seoul.

I took another route down for a change of view. And, as always, I had no idea where I was going to. I tried to look up a map of the Namsan park the night before coming here, but I didn’t found one that was useful. So I just went down the road where there were buses dropping off tourists and turned left into a small hiking trail that I hoped it would be lead me to the way down.

The trail reminded me of hiking trails back in Blacksburg, VA. They are not alike, but they gave me the same rejuvenating feeling.

I eventually reached a paved road. There were some people running and walking. The red part of the road felt so comfortable to run on; it was kind of soft. I believe it’s a special kind of surface that might be better for runners’ knees. It’s really cute to see families coming for walk with their little kids.

Aww... I want a baby now... but I'm still single #life

I felt pretty confident that I was going the right way now, with google map in my hand, and also because I was walking downward. But when I saw some slopes and some turns leading me back to the tower's direction instead of going out of the mountain area, I started to doubt whether I was going the right way.

As soon as I saw a small exit, I looked down the stairs a bit. It seemed like the stairs were leading to a small residential street. I turned into the exit, kept walking down the hill and found myself on a street I didn’t know, and still don’t know until now, what it’s called. I honestly was so focused on getting back to the metro station, got a cup of coffee and kept walking. Shame on me.

This blog provides a route map similar the one that I took. I just left the route before it ended haha.