"Spontaneous Adventures" | Exploring Itaewon

My friends and I spent the afternoon of Saturday, July 7 exploring Itaewon, a city catered toward foreigners with many international restaurants and shops.

LINE Friends Store

We all met at the LINE Friends flagship store in Itaewon, located near the exit of the subway. This location had a total of three floors: two for merchandise and the top for a café. The first floor had the regular LINE Friends merchandises, including characters such as Cony, Brown, Moon and James. In the front, we took a picture with the main mascot, a bear named Brown whose color is - you guessed it! - brown. The main reason why I wanted to go there was because of their second floor: a floor dedicated to is BT21, a collection of characters co-produced by LINE and the famous K-pop group, BTS. My favorite character is Chimmy, the passionate puppy. They had so many merch there that I ended up buying around 50,000 ₩ worth; I bought a portable electric fan of Chimmy, three different folders, a daily and monthly planner, and multiple notebooks. As you can tell from my purchases, I love stationary items, so I had the impulse to stock up on those items. On the third floor, the café has special themed drinks that are based on LINE characters; you can get latte art of their faces too!

All-You-Can-Eat Korean Barbecue

After spending a long time in the LINE store, we eventually went outside and started exploring the streets in Itaewon. Eventually, we became hungry and started to look for restaurants. We didn't know what to eat until we came across a sign that said All-You-Can-Eat BBQ that pointed into an alleyway. Unfortunately, I don't recall the name of the restaurant but I believe it is owned by a famous Korean comedian. At the restaurant, it costed around 17,000 ₩ with a time limit of an hour and a half. With the price, it included an order of served meats; however, we could only get through the first order of food: pork belly and beef. My friend, Jovanni, and I were ready to keep eating for our money's worth, but most of my friends tapped out of eating, so we decided to finish eating and head on our way.

P.S. Did you know that there's no "q" in "barbecue"? I'm shooked.

The Mi Three Coffee

As the sun was setting and the night sky was rising, we paused at a dog café sign and spontaneously decided to check it out. It was called The Mi Three Coffee. The place is owned by a young couple who has three different Shiba dogs: one black, one white, and one brown, hence the name of the shop. There was no admission fee, but each person had to buy a drink in order to stay; drinks costed around 6,000 and 7,000 ₩. One of the owner showed the customers some tricks that the dogs knew such as handshake, patience, and playing dead. We stayed there watching the dogs and the sun set outside the windows. Finally, we took the subway and went our separate ways. Walking toward the subway, we stopped and took pictures of the Namsan Seoul Tower lit in blue before heading on our way home.

K.E.V.

It was really fun exploring Itaewon with my new friend group! From this trip, I learned to step outside of my comfort zone and go with the flow; if we didn't stop to look around, we wouldn't have found an AYCE BBQ place or the dog café. Take some time to pause and explore your surroundings for hidden treasures!