Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 : Day 2, an unexpected twist part 1......

Rise and shine! Good morning Korea! We set our alarms to wake up and prepare ourselves for the day ahead at Everland.

She put on her makeup and I browse through again of the brochure to make sure how we are going to get there. Felt abit stuffy decided to pull away the curtains and lift the window for some fresh air and took a nice picture of the Seoul City View.

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Such a nice view and we're feeling fresh! But I got a bit suspicious of the weather because it looked too foggy for my comfort, it's like there is a lot of moisture in the air or something.

We went down and true to my suspicions, it was raining! The rain is not very heavy unlike those we have in Singapore. 

Droplets were coming down steadily, our hearts sank and felt disappointed.

For your information, Everland is an outdoor theme park situated at the outskirts of Seoul thus to go there on a rainy weather could mean that some rides are closed due to the rain and also the temperature would drop drastically.
Luckily for us, we are here on free and easy, thus we decided to postpone our Everland adventure to the next day, at the same time monitoring how's the weather will be like for tomorrow.

We pushed forward our itinerary, we decided to go shopping at Dongdaemun this afternoon since the shops there are all located indoors in the malls, our lunch would be settled by the simple roadside stalls selling snacks. After which, Nanta Show in the evening at 5pm back in Myeongdong. That's roughly what we decided and we play by ear depending on the time left for the day.

The rain sure dampened our high spirits for a bit early in the morning. We walked in the drizzling cold rain to Paris Baguette Cafe just a few shops away from our hotel, next to Skypark III Hotel, for breakfast.

 Jocelyn had juice and me had my daily dose of coffee.
Their cups are cute, looks like a boy wearing a blue cap. =)

 I got myself a sausage bun, looks yummy with the sauces.

Jocelyn had chicken sandwich.
















The nice warm cosy place in the cafe and breakfast warmed our hearts for a bit bringing some comfort from the cold dampening rain outside. We walked to the 7-11 which is just right at the back behind the Paris Baguette Cafe and bought an umbrella to shield for the walk back to hotel as well as providing us with shelter for the rest of the day ahead...

Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 : Day 1, Part 2 continuation...

Before I continue on our Day 2 in Seoul, Korea.

Recap back on Day 1, we checked into Sejong Hotel at Myeongdong.

Went for dinner at Oppadak Restaurant, had Baked Crispy Chicken.

Actually before we went for dinner, under the recommendation by Jocelyn's friend and ex-colleague, we went to an Optical Shop to make a new pair of glasses each. The shop was located in Myeongdong, the best thing was it's along the same stretch where Oppadak is located, it's just a few shops away.

Jocelyn's friend is a really nice lady, she gave us a map which she got and used in her last trip to Korea, in the map she indicated a few places of interest which we may want to go take a look, the restaurants which serve tasty food as well as the Optical shop. We used that map to navigate ourselves for the first few days in Myeongdong.

Armed with the map from Jocelyn's friend we found Look Optical(name of the shop) without much problems.

It is advisable to bring along an existing pair of glasses which you already own and get them to scan and replicate the similar degree of lenses for you.
The optician does not speak English nor Mandarin, however there's a salesgirl who can speak Mandarin and basic English, she would be able to translate back and forth the information from the Optician.

After scanning your existing lenses, they will show you a menu of different types of lenses suitable for your current degree. Ranging from the lower range of 40,000won to the higher ranges of 80,000won and above.

Depending on your existing degree, the optician will recommend the type of lense for you as the higher degrees one as explained by the salesgirl tend to be thicker, the better and higher range of lenses can be sanded thinner so that your glasses won't look so thick and heavy but of course the choice is all up to you.
They will not hardsell to you to choose the higher ended ones, that's the best part they are not pushy at all.

In the end I chose the 80,000won lense and Jocelyn chose the 40,000won lense, she has lower degree of myopia thus the lower range of lenses is sufficient as it would not be thick for her degree. I chose the 80,000won lense, firstly because my degree of myopia is higher, secondly it also has added properties like UV protection, anti-glare properties and it's thin.

After choosing the lense you can walk around the shop, look, see and free to try all the frames. The spectacles frames range from 20,000won to the more expensive 100,000won and above.

After walking around testing and trying different frames, we finally got the frames we liked, paid up, got a receipt and was told that the spectacles would be ready 30mins later for collection, we can return to collect it before 9.30pm local time. We got back our existing spectacles after the optician took down the power of our degrees.

My pair costs roughly about SGD$130.00+ and hers about SGD$80.00+

What better timing! We walked over to Oppadak to have our dinner and returned to collect it after dinner!

After collection, we walked around and did some window shopping for abit before heading back to our Hotel, before going up to the room we went to the Concierge and asked for directions to go to Everland. They handed us a brochure and roughly explained the various ways to get there and within the brochure there's a discount coupon for foreigners.
I will elaborate in details later on how to get there.

Being dead beat tired from the 6hour long flight, we headed up to our room
and turned in early, unaware of the twist of event tomorrow morning.......