South Korea 2015 Part 6 – Shopping Around Ewha Womans University

This is part of an ongoing travelogue, to start at the beginning click here.

I just checked their official website, that IS how you spell the name, ‘Womans’. I guess they didn’t have google to spellcheck for them back then.

After the morning trip to Namsan Park and N Seoul Tower and lunch in Myeongdong, we took a subway to Ewha Womans University. This is a very popular shopping district here. The area is very large, spread out across 3 subway stations – Ewha Womans University Station, Sinchon Station and Hongik University Station. The area around Hongik is also called Hongdae, and is a specialized shopping district by itself. The 2 universities for women here means the shopping here is geared to the young market – cheap, very trendy and competitive. In our experience, this was the area for the best and cheapest clothes shopping compared to other areas. Prices go for as low as KRW 5,000 for a top or dress, and the variety available here definitely makes it the best place to shop.

If you have the time, you can disembark on any of the 3 stations and walk towards the other 2 stations to enjoy the shopping experience. But in actual fact, I think this would be too much especially if you are serious shopper. The distance between the 3 stations is slightly over 1 km, but if you need to factor in the side streets and hilly terrain.

(Ewha is actually a busy business district. Lots of media companies based here)

I realized I didn’t take many photos of this area, maybe because the family was too busy shopping for a cardigan / blouse for someone in this area.

I saw a cat café in one of the side streets. On our first day here, I had visited a different one in Insadong. I’m not a cat person, but I thought I should visit one for the experience since I saw some fun videos posted by vloggers. Basically, you pay the cover drink charge and you can play with the many cats inside. But you know cats being cats, they’re mostly sleeping or too disinterested unless you buy the food and feed them.

After shopping for a few hours we were at the parallel main street and there were quite a lot of cosmetic shops just like in Myeongdong. We were tired and needed a toilet break, so we found a café with a toilet.

(I don’t really fancy churros but the name of the shop attracted me, being a Haruki Murakami fan)

(very nice décor. I should try this at home)

On the way back to the café, we bought a pork croquette from this stall. It was one of the best street food I had in Korea! After the café stop we wanted to go back to get more on the way to the subway, but the lady manning the stall was not in… too bad. Anyway if you are in the area, please check it out. it is opposite a Subway outlet.

We didn’t actually make it to the another subway station, we basically shopped around Ewha station. After we weren’t really the shopping type, but it was definitely a great experience here.

Next – Cheonggyecheon Stream and Seoul Lantern Festival.