10D9N | Korea Seoul Day 4 | Coex Aquarium Ttukseom Hangang Park Nandaemun Market

Day 4 in Seoul. Breakfast at Ahjumma food truck for Korean toast. Hubs says this ahjumma toast is much better than Issac Toast. Looking back, she used to run the food truck herself, now she has an assistant to do the toasts while she takes the order and handles the cash!

Today's itinerary at a glance
1. Korean Toast for breakfast
2. Sea Aquarium at Coex Mall
3. Lunch at Michelin Bib Gourmand Hadongkwan Coex Mall

4. Stroll along Ttukseom Hangang Park

5. Swan Paddle Boat along Han River

6. Eat Korean Ramen along Han River

7. Visit the famous Hotteok Stall at Nandaemun Market

Today we are visitng Coex Aquarium, Ttukseom Hangang Park for a swan paddle boat ride and finally some street food at Nandaemun Market. We bought our Coex Aquarium tickets from Klook and it is very easy to redeem at the ticket counter.

It is not as large as the one we visited in Osaka, but it houses quite a variety of fishes, sea creatures and many theme aquariums. 

Here's us at an Oriental theme aquarium with koi and oriental houses.

Middle photo: I personally find these glass eye fishies super duper cute! There's also a touch pond where the fishes will come and "bite" your fingers.

Lunch at Hadongkwan, a Michelin Bib Gourmand recommended place. A new branch of famous Korean traditional restaurant serving delicious clear beef soup and rice in Starfield Coex mall.

Hadongkwan is famous for their Gomtang. Each person is served with a bowl of radish and spring onions. Salt and pepper is on the side where you can add to your liking. The soup is served without any salt added. I definitely recommend you to add some salt and spring onions and it tastes so different without adding them!

Since we are at Starfield Coex Mall, might as well visit their famous bookshop!

Next we took the train down to Ttukseom Hangang Park to do some Swan paddle boat and to eat Korean Ramen by the Han River!!! This is really a MUST-DO in Seoul.

Ttukseom Hangang Park

Paddle Boat along the Han River. The weather was very nice, bright and sunny. Perfect for holiday!

Since the max capacity of the paddle boat is 4 persons, I went to the convenience store to buy myself a hot drink- Honey and Red Ginseng! And recce around the convenience store instant noodle machine to observe how the locals cook their instant noodles. 

After an hour of paddle boat, we went for the Korean Ramen. So here's how you do it. Buy a single packet of instant noodles, grab a paper bowl and pay at the counter. Go outside, there's a table for you to take your instant noodles out from the packet and to put the noodles into the paper bowl, together with your seasonings.

Then bring your paper bowl with the noodles into the convenience store where they have the cooking noodles machine counters.

Above: Instant noodle cooking machine counters. Press a button, hot water will start to come out from the nozzle. And the induction stove will hit up as well. Use a pair of chopsticks to stir your noodles continously. There is a timer to see how long more to cook your noodles. Once the timer is up, the stove will stop heating.

Jules James and Jade are all very excited to cook their own noodles.

And there are many accompanying small dishes to buy from the convenience store to go with your ramen like kimchi, sausages, hard boil eggs etc. It was so shiok to eat hot ramen in the cold weather!

6pm: Nandaemun Market. Must visit Hotteok stall at Gate 2. You wouldn't miss it because of the super long queue. This vegetable filled hotteok is really quite nice. The downside was that we were quite late, so every the 5 of us queue, we were only allowed to buy 2 hotteok because they were closing.

After the vegetable hotteok, we went for some mandus and fish sticks.