A quick background on Myeongdong to explain why I specifically wanted to stay here: Myeongdong is a particularly popular area for young people and tourists as a center for fashion and sight-seeing. It has plenty of both high-end department stores and street vendors for food and shopping. It was also featured prominently in one of my favorite dramas You're Beautiful and I've wanted to go ever since :) I'm now in a different part of Seoul than Gangnam and closer to a lot of the places I used to travel a lot too, like Itaewon, Dongdaemun, and Edae. From Gangnam it was a good 45 mins to an hour by subway but from here it's really close!
To start off my first day back in the city, I did my usual; walked around the neighborhood to explore and familiarize myself with the area! It was much different from my Gangnam area; not as shiny and sparkly and no office buildings to be seen. It still was very clean though, and my area has lots of little eating places, coffee/drink shops, and fruit stands along with the shopping.
There are vendors for EVERYTHING. Anything your hyperactive imagination could ever dream up, there is someone (or 20) people selling it. I swear I turned a corner and it looked like Namdaemun!...which it might be. Dajeong or Yeji if you are reading this, is Namdaemun here?? I saw a sign when I went down into the Hoehyeon Underground Shopping Center in the subway station and it said Namdaemun Market when I was coming back up to street level.
While I will not buy anything more in terms of clothes or shoes, I did mean to stock up on my favorite skincare products before I leave here, because otherwise I have to 1) ship them to the US and pay for shipping and wait time, and 2) it's often more than twice as expensive as it is to buy it here to buy it back in the US. My Avocado SkinFood toner I saw on Amazon for $25 while it's less than $8 here!
Again, I LOVE how the cosmetics shops all give you free stuff when you buy there. This time they gave me more stuff free than I even bought!! It's awesome. They gave me a brand-new free tote bag plus Aloe facemask, then TWO free gift packs with masks, shampoos, skincare, eye creams, oils, essences, and who else knows what's in there. I haven't opened them yet lol, the saleslady just kept putting more and more stuff in my bag! The only thing I didn't buy today was my Peach Sake BB Cream that I really like, since they were out of stock at this particular SkinFood. It's light, smells good, and is great for oil control, which is what I need! I'll pick it up sometime later this week.