Midterm week is finally over! After pulling all nighters to retain the material needed to past your exams, it’s time to wind down and have a little bit of fun! All students deserve it! A great place to do that with a friend or two? Hongdae!
I’ve brought up Hongdae in a previous post, but I haven’t talked about what this area has to offer. Hongdae is the neighborhood around Hongik University. As you may have guessed, Hongdae gets its name from this university, taking the Hong from Hongik, and dae from the korean word for university (Dae-hak-gyo 대학교). This is a very popular hangout area for the younger population as it is known for its youthful ambiance. Hongdae has plenty to do with its blocks of shops, cozy cafes, gourmet eateries and street food, and arcade areas, making it impossible to do everything in one visit! There also is a street where people gather to watch groups of people perform covers of famous songs and k-pop!
My personal favorite spot in Hongdae is the street lined with arcades! Unfortunately for my wallet, I’m a sucker for any type of games and love spending time in arcades! It doesn’t help that there’s about 5-6 arcades just on this one street, so I often spend money trying to win plushies from the claw machines! I’d like to think I’m at least slightly okay at them since I tend to win at least one thing whenever I go! I even won a smaller version of the avocado plush I have! In the United States, we have a couple of claw machines in our arcades, but I find it fascinating that many of the arcades are just filled with them. And, their plushies are super adorable! Of course, minus the claw machines, their arcades are full of exciting games like basketball, darts, dance dance revolution, racing games, and much, much more!
I also finally got to visit the Line store cafe with my friend (I never noticed there was a cafe in the Hongdae Line store T^T)! If you think the store was cute, the cafe is even cuter! The walls are filled with cool pictures of the BT21 characters on one side, and the original Line characters on the other side! Near the ordering and pick up station, BT21 statues are lined up where you can pose with them! Directly in front of the pick-up is a cool seating area where they have large versions of some of the characters. The menu items are kind of pricey since it’s BT21 items, but the Chimmy sundae I picked was really yummy! My friend also enjoyed his Tata drink! 🙂
Another cool activity I found in Hongdae was something called an “Archery Cafe”. Even though I love animal cafes, I got to admit that an Archery cafe is such a cool concept. What’s better than enjoying a drink while competing with a couple of friends in archery? Even if you aren’t good at it or you never picked up a bow before, you can get a quick training lesson beforehand! So, if you ever find yourself in Hongdae, I suggest trying out the archery cafe!
All in all, Hongdae is such a great place if you want to have a day of fun and de-stress! There’s so much unique things to do and so much to explore!
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