Seoul, Day 1 (2025): Haus Nowhere, Contemporary Art, & Shopping in Gangnam
My cousin, Tiffany, wanted to go to Seoul, and we wanted to revisit it as well, so she, her boyfriend Mike, and the two of us booked tickets on the newly launched Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines Seattle to Seoul flight. We were excited to try out the flight on the newer Dreamliner plane, but things didn’t start off too promising. Apparently this route has had various mechanical issues leading to delays, diversions, or cancellations, and sure enough, while we were waiting to board our flight, the gate agent informed us that the captain had paused boarding. Once we saw some passengers come back out of the boarding doors, we realized that this would be a much longer delay. Fortunately for us, we could go upstairs to use the Alaska Lounge, but with no updated departure time, it was a bit frustrating not knowing when we would leave, if at all.
After about 90 minutes, we received the good news that the boarding process was about to being, so we went back down to the gate. Normally the long-haul flights would depart from the S gates in SeaTac, where they’re designed to hold the larger planes as well as better accommodate the much larger capacity of the boarding process. Since we were boarding out of the smaller N-gates, the entire boarding process was chaotic because there’s no space for all the people waiting in line to board, so all you really saw was a massive crowd of people in a disorganized mess, clogging up every pathway leading to the gate. Hopefully this will be fixed in the near future.
The flight itself, about 12 hours long, was fortunately not eventful. The food was good and the service was pleasant, and the seats on the Dreamliner are much more comfortable than the ones we flew on to Tokyo. Once we landed, it took a while to get through customs and immigration, but we eventually made it out and managed to buy tickets on the bus to our hotel. There are ticket machines everywhere, so finding one is easy and booking it is generally simple as long as you know what the name of the final destination is. And the buses loaded literally outside the terminal on the same floor, so it’s extremely convenient. We had a few minutes before the bus arrived, so we enjoyed the Christmas display in the airport.
About an hour later, we made it to our hotel and checked in and crashed for the night.
Haus Nowhere and K-Star Road
For our first full day in Seoul, we didn’t want to have any reservations to timed entry anywhere since we weren’t sure how we’d feel after that long flight combined with the jet lag. So instead, we started off with the expansive breakfast buffet at our hotel and then headed over to the Coex Mall to enjoy the amazing Starfield Library:
I’m not sure about the history of the library, but it’s fascinating that it exists in the middle of a large mall, and is fully operational as a library as far as I can tell. I don’t know how anyone gets any reading done in here since it appears to be constantly crowded with tourists taking photos everywhere. Still, it’s a cool place to check out.
Next, we needed to take a bus to get to the new Haus Nowhere Seoul, and buying tickets for Tiffany and Mike proved to be a challenge. We didn’t realize that the ticket machines didn’t take US cards, and we didn’t have much Won on us, but we had enough to be able to buy new passes for the two of them and to add enough money for one ride. We figured we could find a bank somewhere to withdraw money from to top up all of our transit passes.
One thing to note about navigating Korea is that Google Maps doesn’t offer directions here—it’s something about the government not wanting that data accessible to the North Koreans or something like that. So instead, you’ll want to download Naver maps or Kakao maps and use that. I’ve used Naver Maps and it’s been pretty easy to understand which bus or train to take to get to our destination.
For our first transit trip, we needed to take one bus a few stops, and after getting a bit lost finding the bus stop, it was really easy. You just tap your pass when you enter from the front of the bus, press the stop button to indicate you want to get off the bus at the next stop, and then tap off at any of the doors to exit.
Soon, we were at Haus Nowhere Seoul, one of the newest locations belonging to the Gentle Monster eyewear company:
It definitely stands out among the other buildings in the area. I think it opened up in September, and with this new store, they introduced two new products, a hat line and a houseware line, so we were excited to check everything out.
Once you enter, you’re immediately introduced to a large animatronic dog:
Gentle Monster is known for incorporating animatronic art in many of their stores, and the ones here did not disappoint. I, however, didn’t have much time to appreciate the art as I had to find an elevator to get up to the fifth floor where the Nudake Teahouse is located. Reservations aren’t taken at Nudake, instead it’s a first come, first served waitlist, so one tip that I read is to immediately get on the waitlist once you arrive at Haus Nowhere. This way, you can spend the time waiting downstairs in the various stores. Since it was a Sunday, I was expecting an hour or so wait, but it turned out to be like 20 minutes. After looking at some glasses and hats, we all headed back up to to be seated at Nudake and were immediately impressed with the aesthetics:
Once we were seated, a server came with an iPad, which had the drink and dessert menus on it. He also explained to us that we could smell all the teas using the silver tea holder on the table (pictured above). There were quite a few teas on the menu which meant that we spent a fair amount of time smelling all of them. The dessert menu wasn’t as large, primarily because four of them weren’t available at the time we were there.
After some discussion among all of us, I ordered the Chapter 4, Mike ordered the Smoke, Tiffany ordered the Black Caramel tea and the Beauty and the Beast dessert, and Nick ordered the Leather Boots tea and the 155mm dessert. Soon, our server came back with a cart with our order and artfully placed it on our table:
Mike’s cigar and Nick’s shoe were the showstoppers:
But it felt weird to cut through a shoe, and it looked a bit sad once we did so:
I liked the caramelized bananas, but was not a fan of the filling of the shoe. If you like grapefruit, I think your opinion would differ from mine. I didn’t try the cigar, but Mike seemed to like it.
We also liked our teas, and since Nick ordered a signature tea, it came in their signature nails teaware:
His fingers barely fit the nails on the teacup, but he still made it work. They actually sell the teaware in the Nuflat store downstairs, but we were told that they sold out of all of the nails tableware set.
After our amazing afternoon tea, we continued to explore more of the entire Haus Nowhere building and I got my chance to see some of the art on display:
I tried on some hats from the Atiissu store, but was only able to have this photo taken (it was getting busy inside):
I was contemplating getting this hat, but then was told that like the nails tableware, this was also sold out. Nick actually got a cool looking baseball hat instead.
Next, we headed over to the Tamburins fragrance store, where they had a display of dog themed bottles and scents:
I was not a fan of this line, so instead I bought some lip balms from their main fragrance line.
And of course, we had to take a look at the Gentle Monster frames, where I spent far too long contemplating buying some frames that I would probably never wear:
I actually restrained myself from buying anything there, which is a minor victory in my books!
And with that, we headed back downstairs, but saw this large screen with a moving image of the large dog that’s featured in the center of the floor:
As we approached the screen, we were told that we could have our image taken and would then be shown an AI image of the dog wearing our clothes. Naturally, both of us had to do it, and we had some interesting results:
I was curious to see how it would interpret my blue hair on the dog, but I guess it opted to just give the dog a blue beanie instead.
After spending a few hours in Haus Nowhere, we took a short walk over to Common Ground, a small shopping mall made out of shipping containers. I didn’t find anything there that I wanted, but the building itself was cool to look at:
From here, we wanted to head over to Gangnam, but the train was going to take a while, so we used Uber Taxi instead. It basically just calls a taxi, but it works, and since you can input the destination in the app, there’s no confusion on the destination. And the taxis in Seoul were quite affordable—the only time we didn’t opt for the taxi was during rush hour because traffic in Seoul is no joke.
After a short car ride, we were off to our next stop, the K Museum of Contemporary Art. There were two exhibits on display, so we get tickets to the Geeky Land exhibit. We were told to take the elevator up to the top floor and work our way down, so we did, and were immediately introduced to the exhibit:
The exhibit featured what appeared to be young, Korean artists offering a wide array of art on display:
This was just a small sample of all the art. I think the whole exhibit covered three full floors, so there was a lot to see. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon away from the hustle and bustle of Gangnam literally outside.
Next, we walked to K-Star Road, which I thought was a specific spot in Gangnam, but really referred to the street full of expensive stores that Kpop Idols have been seen shopping at. There were some bears along the road for various Kpop stars:
Since we were here, I decided to go to the Loewe store nearby. We did not leave empty handed…
For dinner, we wanted some soup because it was pretty cold outside. Nick was able to find a kalguksu restaurant near our hotel, so after dropping off our shopping at our rooms, we walked over to find this restaurant.
There was no English anywhere, but that didn’t stop us from going in.
Once we were at our table, we saw the tablet on the table which offered an English option, which was a relief. Nick and Mike ordered the spicy kalguksu, Tiffany ordered the same thing, but with a rich beef broth, and I ordered the normal kalgugksu. We also ordered some mandoo:
It was amazingly delicious, although given the amount of sweat coming off of Nick’s head, I could tell the spicy version was very…spicy.
And then to finish the night, we decided to go to the Baskin Robbins in the mall next to our hotel. The store proudly displays that they have 100 flavors, instead of the 31 that we get in the US, so we had to investigate this for ourselves. Once we got inside, we could immediately see that they offered some items that we don’t get in the US:
I wanted the fondue set, but they didn’t offer it, which was disappointing. So instead, I ordered the sweet potato brulee sundae. After we all ordered and found a seat, our desserts were ready:
We enjoyed our frozen treats and decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel to get as much sleep as we could given the jet lag. We would need all the rest we could get because tomorrow, we’re off to Lotte World!