My travel-loving friends and I recently went on a trip to South Korea. We came across a pretty good fare on Hawaiian Airlines and booked it. A couple of months after booking our flight, we found out that the 2018 Winter Olympics were being in held in Korea at the same time we are there. So, we booked a hotel to make sure we had a place to stay.

About a month before our trip we finally decided on an itinerary. Our focus was food, spa, shopping, culture–and an Olympic event!We arrived in South Korea on a Friday evening and made our way to the Lotte Hotel Seoul. We dropped our bags off in the room and left to explore a nearby neighborhood to find fried chicken and beer.

Korea’s fried chicken is famous and we wanted to be sure to get some while we were there.  We ended up going to three different places on our first night so that we could experience as much as possible in our three days in South Korea.  We ended up staying out until 4 a.m.  In addition, to Korean Fried Chicken (KFC), we also enjoyed beer, soju, makkeoli and Korean BBQ. We finally fell asleep a little after 5 a.m.

We woke up around 8 a.m. the next day and got ready for our first full day during which we scheduled a private tour of Seoul.  We chose a private tour so that if we decided that something was not quite what we wanted, we could ask the tour guide to make modifications for us to make the most efficient use of our time.  We found out that these private tours were very reasonably priced and so flexible. We highly recommend the Viator and One Day Korea tour packages.We visited Gyongbokgung.

Some of us tried larvae.We all enjoyed lunch with delicious bibimbap, budae chigae, seafood pancake,  and so much more.We dressed in traditional Korean attire.  We visited Seoul Tower/Mount Namsan and then went shopping for a little while. We returned to hotel in the afternoon, rested for a few minutes and then left for our night tour of Hongdae.
We saw dancing in the streets. Enjoyed more snacks and beer and grapefruit soju at some zombie looking place where they served us fried egg appetizer, spicy pork, fried chicken, and black-bean sauce noodles.

What an awesome first day in South Korea!  We did so much in just over 24 hours.  Totally making the most of our time in Seoul.  Living Hilo Style in Seoul.