당남구 (Gangnam District)

Accommodation

My Solo 10 days were based in Gangnam. I used my 1 bed studio apartment on the 5th floor of a high rise, about 3 minutes walk from Gangnam Subway Station (당남역), as a base to explore parts of Seoul not yet explored and also revisit some of those with which I was beginning to feel a little bit more familiar. 

Doorstep Shopping

Rather than post in a chronological order, from hereon I'm going to post on more functional aspects, beginning with the Gangnam area itself.

The subway station has a transfer between 2 lines, a north south and an east west. I suppose I'd walked between the lines and the exit nearest my apartment (Exit No 6), about a dozen times before appreciating, whilst following the signs to the exit or the platforms, that I'd never actually covered the same ground twice. By chance I came across a map that explained the reason. The montage below shows two views of Naver Map (like Google Maps but Korean, with some very clever bells and whistles). You can see how, with zooming in, you can see an outline of Basement level 1 (middle image), and then basement level 2 (left image), which is above the platform levels. The Mall map on the right, basement level 1, shows the very substantial, well lit, well presented and super clean shopping facility. How substantial? Roughly the size of Chichester's (a small city in the south of the UK) main North, South, West and East Streets combined, in a diamond shape, to put it in some kind of perspective. But underground and way more attractive. And that's just one subway station!

Coex

Coex is what it's called, and it's in the Gangnam district. Combined shopping, entertainment and exhibition halls, food malls, an aquarium, possibly the world's best know public library (it's not a book shop, tourists everywhere, no one shushing), and Asia's largest cinema complex which had over 9 million viewers in it's opening year. And the waiting area, like lots of places around Seoul, had tiered seating / steps. And it hosted the Baeksang Arts awards this year, as I posted previously.

Psy

No mention of Gangnam would be complete without some reference to Psy, a global star who is credited with really putting the Hallyu on the map, internationally. A subway mural and his sculpted hands, synonymous with the Gangnam Style dance move, were two things I spotted without having to go out of my way. The YouTube Paris surprise appearance captures his appeal.

Nature

And amongst all this, as well as numerous small green areas, I found a long route running beside a small river, below the main built up level, where things did feel very different. Earlyish on I'd cycled to the nearest mountain range and did a bit of trail running but navigation, time and phone battery limited what I felt happy with at that moment. Later I looked more closely at the map and spotted a river I'd not noticed on my cycle. The following montage shows the river side paths. It also captures a graffiti covered pedestrian underpass, so such urban art does exist, whilst the underpass itself was clean and clear. The second montage shows that throughout Seoul, views of iconic locations are never far away: Lotte Tower, Namsan Tower, and Bukhansan.