Where to Start in Seoul: Peeling the City One Layer at a Time

Seoul is a city where history, modernisation, culture, and tradition intertwine. Exploring it properly requires a little thoughtfulness, and perhaps a sense of what excites you most when travelling. The question most travellers eventually face is simple: Where do you start in a city like Seoul?

The answer, at least for us, was to explore the city the way you would peel an onion — one layer at a time.

Ihwa Mural Village - Seoul have cite viewpoints

A lot of it depends on where you decide to make your base in the city. Most online suggestions will recommend staying in Myeongdong, and honestly, the suggestion makes sense. Myeongdong attracts a large number of tourists, and almost every sightseeing route or day trip seems to pass through this area at some point.

But hotels and Airbnb hosts are aware of this as well.

Unless you are staying in hostels, you will likely have to shell out a little extra money to stay in Myeongdong. We considered staying there too, but we were not ready to pay the price. Instead, we settled for a single-room style apartment just two subway stops away from Myeongdong, which turned out to be a much more reasonable option.

Once the base was decided, the next challenge was figuring out how to actually explore the city without constantly travelling back and forth across Seoul. We had already discussed public transportation in our Seoul planning blog, so here we focused on finding the most practical way to move around the city.

The approach that worked best for us was surprisingly simple.

We created zones.

Using Myeongdong as the central point, I started building a long list of places we wanted to visit. Then, using Google Maps, I divided them depending on whether they were located north, east, west, or south of our stay. This simple exercise helped us understand which places could naturally be combined on the same day instead of travelling across the city repeatedly.

For example, locations such as Bukchon Hanok Village, Gyeongbokgung Palace, and Insadong all fall roughly north of Myeongdong. Instead of spreading them across multiple days, it made far more sense to club them together and explore that part of the city in a single outing.

The result looked something like this.

#	Starting	Locations	Time to travel	Direction	Combination
1	Myeondong	Bukchon Hanok	25 min	North
2	Myeondong	N Seoul Tower	32 min	South
3	Myeondong	Cheongeycheon Stream	18 min	North	Night
4	Myeondong	Gyeongbokgung Palace (including K cultural museum)	24 min	North	Do with 1
5	Myeondong	Insadong	16 min	North	Do with 3
6	Myeondong	Gwangjang Market	16 min	East	Evening
7	Myeondong	Hongdae Street	30 min	West

This simple zoning approach made planning surprisingly easy. Instead of worrying about dozens of places across the city, we could focus on exploring one direction of Seoul at a time.

The list of places we eventually identified came from multiple sources. Some were obvious tourist attractions, others came from market and restaurant recommendations we found on Instagram. A few were discovered through travel blogs, and many simply appeared while browsing Google Maps and falling into one rabbit hole after another.

Slowly the list grew longer.

Starfield Library in Starfield COEX Mall, Gangnam

What started as a few must-see places turned into a fairly extensive collection of attractions across Seoul and beyond. To make sense of it all, we categorised them so that it became easier to decide which ones suited our travel style and which ones could be skipped.

The table below captures the complete list of places we considered while planning our trip.

Places	Category	Our recommendation
Gramdeal - Seongsu	Market
Gwangjang Market	Market
Insadong	Market
Myeongdong	Market
Hongdae Street	Market, Busking (Street Performances)
Petite France	Amusement (Little Europe)	Been to Europe? Skip
Daedunsan Mountain Suspensio bridge	Far from Seoul	Can be skipped
N Seoul Tower	Modern Infra	Can be skipped
Yeolrin Songhyeon Park	Modern Infra, Sculpture park	Can be skipped
Cheongsong Ice valley and fountain - Far from Seoul	Natural	Can be skipped
Garden of Morning calm	Natural	Different
Tongyeong - Dpirang (Night Activity)	Digital theme park	Different, can try
Bukchon Hanok Village	Historic	Do not Skip
Gwanghwamun Square	Historic	Do not Skip
Gyeongbokgung Palace	Historic	Do not Skip
DDP	Modern infra	Do not Skip
Gangnam and Library in mall	Modern Infra	Do not Skip
Cheongeyecheon	Natural	Do not Skip
Yeouido	Modern infra, seafront	Evening spot
Chuncheon/Legoland	Another city / Amusement	Fan of Legos? Why not
Harry Potter Café	Café	Food average, Ambiance amazing
Changdokgung Palace	Historic	Into History, Yes, skip if get bored
Lotte Tower	Amusement	Love Amusement park, do try
Bulguksa Temple	Another city	Only if want to try besides Seoul, Busan
Gyeongiju	Another city	Only if want to try besides Seoul, Busan
Jeonju - City	Another city	Only if want to try besides Seoul, Busan
Andong hahoe village	Far off city	Only if want to try besides Seoul, Busan
Haensa Temple	Historic, Another city	Only if want to try besides Seoul, Busan
Everland - Theme park activity for Christmas	Amusement	Prefer Lotte, else if looking for festive vibes
Gangchon Rail park - Activity	Amusement	Something different (far from Seoul)
Nami Island	Amusement	Very different, do try but far from Seoul

The list of places can start looking overwhelming after a point. While planning our trip, we felt the same way. There seemed to be too many places and too many possibilities, and it was easy to feel lost while trying to organise everything into a sensible itinerary. That is when we discovered something interesting about Seoul that can make exploring the city far more engaging — the Seoul stamp trails.

This was the first time we had heard of the concept, and unfortunately it happened a little late in our planning process. But once we started reading about it, the idea immediately felt fascinating.

Across Seoul, many historic and tourist attractions are connected through designated stamp trails. These trails link several locations together so that travellers can explore the city while following a themed path. At certain points along these trails you will find small old-style post boxes containing stamp pads and stamps. If you are carrying a notebook, you can stamp it at each station as you progress through the trail.

There are 28 such stations across the city, and each stamp represents a place you have visited along the route. As you walk through the city, you will notice small markers telling you which trail you are on and where the next stamp station might be located. The stamps are usually placed at the start, important milestones, or the end of these trails.

It turns the simple act of sightseeing into something more playful. Instead of just moving from one attraction to another, you are slowly collecting a story of the places you have explored.

By the time we discovered the stamp trails, our itinerary was already mostly fixed. Reworking the entire plan around the trails would have been difficult, but we still liked the idea of collecting at least a few stamps from Seoul.

So we looked for alternatives.

During our search we came across a small shop in central Seoul called T.I.M.E, where travellers can stamp their notebooks with a collection of Seoul trail stamps. Walking into that shop felt like discovering Alibaba’s treasure. There were stamps everywhere, each representing different trails and locations across the city.

We happily pulled out our small pocket notebooks and started stamping them one after another. By the time we were done, our notebooks were filled with impressions of Seoul that felt far more personal than any typical souvenir.

Travel souvenirs are usually magnets or postcards that eventually get forgotten in a drawer. But a notebook filled with stamps collected across a city feels different. Each stamp reminds you of a place, a walk, or a small discovery you made along the way.

Seoul quietly offers that experience through its stamp trails — if you are curious enough to notice them.

After going through all the possibilities and experiences the city offers, choosing where to go in Seoul can still feel overwhelming. If you prefer a simpler approach and want to experience the essence of the city without trying to cover everything, a shorter list works just as well.

The following places capture a good balance of Seoul’s history, modern character, and everyday city life. Focusing on these will allow you to experience some of the best aspects of the city without constantly rushing from one attraction to another.

Places	Category
Lotte Tower	Amusement
Tongyeong - Dpirang (Night Activity)	Digital theme park
Bukchon Hanok Village	Historic
Changdokgung Palace OR Gyeongbokgung Palace	Historic
Gwanghwamun Square	Historic
DDP	Modern infra
Gangnam and Library in mall	Modern Infra
Cheongeyecheon Stream	Natural

Markets have been removed from this list and separately captured for you to pick.

Cheongeyecheon Stream, right in centre of Seoul

Going through Seoul was one satisfying experience for us, it was complex and even though we missed some places we left content with our visit to Seoul.

Stay a little bit longer to experience more and get to know city more in our series blogs accessible through links below

Travel, Mi Amor