Originally Posted by
CWA14
Thank you so much for this very through breakdown. We will arrive late on a Monday evening at Gimpo Airport and have three full days in Seoul. One day will be a full DMZ tour (ideally through the American USO as they seem to include the tunnels, Demarcation Line and everything circumstances permitting). Another day will be Bukchon village, Ikseon-dong, Seoul Tower, 1-2 museums. We aren't keen on shopping or medical tourism. Am thinking for the third day maybe a day trip to Nari Island, Paju of or somewhere nearish Seoul. Will definitely look at reviews re: breakfasts at the Ibis's. I think it'll be fine for the missus. We can also have a look at breakfast spots nearish those hotels. Naver will definitely need to be downloaded (especially as we will probably rent a car to work our way towards where I used to teach and ultimately Busan). I take it Uber won't work for taxis. How is Kakao T in set up, rides, and pricing compared to regular taxis?
Ah I see why you were thinking of the Magok property now. I believe the USO tour gets you the most access to the DMZ area which is in the Paju area fyi. So in that case I think Nami Island will be nicer especially during the season you will be there. Outside the hotel for breakfast you might be limited to Starbucks and other bakery/cafes, most other places won't open until 11ish for lunch. You may find an Original Pancake House or butterfinger pancakes other than that breakfast isn't a big thing. Almost no one hails cabs from the road anymore. Your existing Uber app will switch to UT when you're in the country and it connects to the UT taxi company. Kakao T may not work without a Korean phone number anymore they recently launched a separate app called K.Ride which does the same thing just for foreigners, check your app store. Either way it also connects to 'regular' taxis and shows the predicted cost with several options for taxi types/sizes. Sometimes when there's too many people calling the kakao taxi I use uber. There are other apps for some other companies like TADA (always vans) or TmoneyGO (similar to KakaoT, I think the difference is Tmoney doesn't show the destination ahead of time to the driver) but for sure you'll have to connect your credit card to the account for automatic payment.