48 Hours Walking Around the Entire City of Seoul

thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this video it all started with a simple question one of those bizarre ideas that i get about 50 times per day like what if we opened a pod thai restaurant underwater that only scuba divers could go to or has anyone tried to ride a camel all the way from africa to the usa today's wacky idea was can we walk all the way around seoul is that even possible a few hours of research later and it turns out yeah you could totally walk all the way around seoul that's just what they do one of these and this is exactly what we needed a quest walk all over soul and stuff oh souls get it souls after stashing all our extra gear in a locker that was just looking for its jim carrey and you know aren't we all [Applause] we started out on our journey 11 30. a little rusty at this the old city wall of souls stretched around this entire area with eight massive gates allowing people in and out we were going to walk from gate to gate all eight of them until we made it back to where we started all right ready to start this place to begin all right gate number one let's go we didn't know what we would find we didn't even know what we were looking for in the first place we just needed something different oh there's guards i want to fill this back in our first gate already down i think we go this way there's this cool app that they have for this walk that lets you know gps coordinates but it's still not exactly easy to find we're gonna go question [Music] by the starbucks so as soon as we got to the gate i started to feel super super excited because yeah we haven't really done a quest like this or a mission like this since maybe the camino [Music] and i'm just convinced that it's our it's our way to go it's a thing that makes us the most happy and it's a great way to see it's a great way to see the city and hear the sounds of it too what's it doing well these are the signs that tell us which way we were only about two minutes into this walk when we realized just how little of soul we had actually seen in our few weeks here so right we're not actually going to be walking around the entire city limits of seoul so seoul outgrew these city walls a long time ago and it's much much bigger now than it was back then so what we're walking is the old historical boundary of seoul so this path does lead you literally through the city through the kind of countryside up and over the mountains you do cross a couple of rivers i think i understand you kind of get this awesome [Music] we've been in and out of seoul now for i would say almost two to three weeks and i feel like we've seen so much of seoul and we just discovered a neighborhood that we didn't even know existed so cool so cool we were of course hilariously unprepared too excited to even look at the weather forecast of course the weather is a little precarious today this is the that is the old city wall right there yes we brought one pack between the two of us and we're just trading off there's good clean drinking water all along this thing which is just amazing thank you you always got to make time for a workout i mean wow look at how buff we are look at all this work we're doing it feels really nice definitely feels like i'm doing something productive but i'm definitely there are other people doing the trail too this is exciting when we initially started this hike and i heard city wall i thought oh cool urban hiking did not know that we would be going up some mountains it's already very beautiful and quiet up here and there's the city wall [Music] i just found out that they started repairing this wall 1422 this sectional wall that goes here and then all the way up the side of that mountain which i think i think that's exactly where we're headed what yeah we're going up this mountain i think so and i think we're going along the top of it are we prepared for that well if it rains no if it doesn't rain also probably not some things never change at this point things started getting tough like really tough we just made it to the part of the trail where we have to climb up this massive mountain and we see so many people turning back here and that's making me a little nervous this is starting to get really really tough and cold and windy just felt our first few drops of rain might be getting weird out here real soon so according to this plaque back there we've reached a part where there's a ton of guard posts that used to be here because in 1968 apparently some north korean infiltrants invaded and as a result this mountain was actually closed to the public and guard posts were put in place since then they've began removing a lot a lot of the guard posts and they're almost all gone and returning the mountain back to the public [Music] [Music] see [Music] the views from the top are incredible but with the wind this definitely isn't for the faint of heart so we didn't book our hotel yet because we didn't know how far we were going to make it i think we should probably should probably do that huh yes this is definitely the harder version but a much cooler one this is getting pretty pretty steep i think we're almost to the next gate though so it looks like everybody else is on the way back down we must continue onwards i'm so impressed by all the people doing this like it's like it's no joke no joke it is tough it is like hand over foot grabbing the rope and just when the weather was at its absolute worst the city wall provided strawberry ice cream that's a nice treat this thing is delicious though all right so i managed to just book a hotel the only problem the hotel is it's the it's way over there so we just gotta make it there oh boy the camera can't even focus it's so far away the path is immaculately well maintained with well-built steps signs and trails throughout it's physically demanding but super safe i am pretty impressed with everyone doing this hike today i even saw a woman wearing slippers basically climbing up those stairs and i thought man i want to be like you someday this is truly an incredible incredible hike all the villages that you see all the mountains and you can even hear the drums from the palaces as they're doing the changing of the guard it almost feels like because it's an ancient fortress and it's so sacred almost and it's protected han young protected soul for so many years hundreds of years that it almost feels like you shouldn't be here but i think it's so awesome that so many people are using it and walking this very trail today [Music] so we're heading down to the gate at the bottom of this hill right where the two mountains connect and as you can see up there we just go we just go right back up what to the hit to the next gate oh my god see it up there [Music] this is the part where we stop for a moment and talk about squarespace hey guys i'm lisa hi i'm josh there comes a time in every person's life when they have to decide should i turn this hobby into a business it's time and usually the part that immediately follows that is i need a website when we made our website we started with a self-hosted self-built thing because i'm a huge nerd who likes to diy stuff and that went fine but as we kept adding more and more to it the site just slowed to a crawl stuff started not working keeping up with the updates was becoming a full-time job and it just never really looked as good as we wanted it to eventually we had enough and moved our entire site to squarespace it took just a few hours to migrate everything over even the complicated stuff and when it was done it looked way way better than anything we could build ourselves we did it okay you get the point if you're interested head to squarespace.com to get started use our link below to save ten percent okay back up the mountain so we made it here we made it to the fourth gate i just found out apparently like right after we left after the first game was the site of two more gates those weren't still here in the same way that this one is so we're actually at the fourth gate now but that doesn't mean that we're halfway there in fact we're not even close to halfway there's still a really long way to walk [Music] there are actually two different ways to go here one is up which follows the city wall and another one is down that goes through the city and then you meet back up with the city wall much later instead of going up the mountain but but seeing as though this is a city wall hike up is the only right way to go what you got there this is literally this is literally all the food that we brought remind you of anything just more bread that's the literal only thing we've eaten since we woke up today we definitely intended to stop and take breaks and we thought maybe we'd pass through some coffee shops and some villages where we can eat but with the rain coming beige food energy levels are at an all-time low this trail is definitely definitely well paved beautiful staircase and the area is so green and lush i i just as many stairs as there are i can't complain because think of the people that one had to build this city wall to begin with and then the people that kindly built in these steps so that we can access them you believe we climbed all of that look look behind you all the way down there this is about the point where we're starting to get really really tired you see you can do this entire hike in one day theoretically it's just over 18 kilometers but it's a lot to do in one day and if you hurried it you wouldn't get to spend your time looking at views like this the city wall hike is not something to rush that up there is the highest point of the city wall so theoretically after that should be all downhill from here today unless you hear this then it's time to get moving did you just hear that thunder yes that is very terrifying it feels like the calm before the storm i feel like the wind is picking up and it's it's getting cold and kind of making me nervous at least we're going down yeah at least the thunder stopped for a second maybe we'll beat it touch and go aren't we even with the storm brewing it all felt fine calm and safe we're passing through a beautiful section of this trail where there's just a lot of pine trees and you can tell there's a certain serenity but seriousness here we also just passed the january 21st pine tree then we came across this tree that contained bullets from a north korean attempt to sneak into the palace and assassinate their president this one incident which happened only 50 years ago closed this very trail in these very mountains for 40 years up until this point seeing all the views climbing on the stairs and exploring all of seoul's cool villages it was easy to forget what this was all about as we're walking past this portion of the trail the thing that i keep thinking about is just how recent it was that these trails this mountain was actually opened up 2007 so that was 15 years ago 15 years ago so not that long ago this was a fortress this is a fortress that served to protect seoul for 300 years there's still remnants of barbed wire and they're still removing a lot of it i actually feel like this trail tells so much history and so much reality of what what it's like to live here and what it was like to live here 50 years ago number five just one more to go for today this is the north gate and that's actually the only gate that is actually still intact or connected to the city wall it's really cool to see this sort of in the situation that you would have seen it when it was first built directly connected to this wall that seemingly goes on forever in both directions and back on the trail here we go is this the right path so you gotta go that way so we've been walking six hours and we haven't taken any breaks the entirety of the time so you know might make it to our hotel before it's dark seeing this part of seoul the quieter more rural and most importantly slower paced part was something that we didn't even know existed this is really the first that we've experienced of quiet soul we have been in mostly the downtown areas and it's always invariably been super loud super busy there's an entirely different side of it that we didn't even know existed until right now and we like it a lot and just like that we see signs of the city and i'm kind of sad because ah that was such a cool journey into a quiet and rural and ancient and sacred part of seoul i think tomorrow will be another day but i think tomorrow will be a little bit more busy and city this day was really cool really really cool but also i'm incredibly incredibly hungry so i'm not complaining i think it's for your hair [Music] we may have made it to the city part of the city wall trail but it is no less beautiful or naturey and the city wall is just right there what do we do so i think we've reached the part where the city wall the part that's built actually ends and then we continue on the city wall path where it used to be yeah we've been just following this thing basically mindlessly for the past four hours [Music] i don't know if this is weird at all but it feels like the city wall has become a little bit of our friend our guide kind of sad to see it go for just today [Music] wow what a walk oh my god that was so beautiful the whole day honestly for as much of a pain as that was going up and down those two mountains i didn't really want it to end we made it roughly half of the way around the city wall for as tired as we were we kind of wanted to keep going we wanted to keep exploring keep finding new parts of seoul it honestly feels a little bit weird quite jarring to be walking on the main street with all the cars buses and scooters going by you can see across the way the gate continues and the trail continues and a bunch of people walking and there's a lot of me that also just wants to go with them but we must rest and we must feast i remember this feeling all too well oh yeah this is our little hostel for the night oh it's nice to sit down it's really hard to show the room because it's so small but you know we got the bunk beds time to eat the fun and hard part of finishing a day of walking is always trying to find food sunday on memorial day everything's closed i don't know i don't know what we're gonna do even subway closed up we found where all the people are well we found all the restaurants oh there is glimmering lights everywhere and steam if this isn't it i don't know i don't know what it is this is definitely one of those places where i wish i had a friend here so overwhelming wow definitely getting overloaded by all the different kinds of foods and lights and people this all looks great i just don't know what to do we had accidentally found one of the biggest street food markets in all of seoul the specialty here the thing that everyone is fighting for a seat over the must try mung bean pancake seems like everybody is here for the mung bean pancakes so now we are too like this is amazed but i'm suddenly starting to get very energized like at the game we're gonna find a place okay so we think that we've ordered some food but to be honest i'm not sure yet she came over she gave us this uh cup of onions and then lisa pointed at some things she took a picture of and now we hope she's returning with food at some point it is nuts in here the name might not sound super appealing to you depending on where you're from but believe me it's worth fighting for from what i can tell this is the meat mung bean pancake it's really hot it's crunchy like a hash brown on the outside and inside it's got a lot of good stuff meat veggies i think potatoes i don't know for sure but it's really good we walked into this place immediately 10 bajillion people you just kind of wander around until you see someone who's about to leave and then you just awkwardly hover over the back of wherever they're standing until they get up and then you immediately swoop in and take their table and hope that they paid the bill before they left because otherwise that's on you and it turns out this one is a netflix street food special place we got to go back and watch it these guys are hovering waiting for us to get done competition will be fierce that was so good just like the best hash brown filled with meat that you could ever have and vegetables and it's apparently like 10 billion percent of your daily intake of fiber we have day two tomorrow are you ready all right all of that was just 19 000 or like 16 including the beers it might not seem like a lot but it's super filly that was so so smart i still can't believe that just an hour ago we were just wandering around our neighborhood we were just wandering around our neighborhood and we happened upon the most crowded place that's where all these people were from the market we slowly waddled our way back to our hostel grabbed some totally unnecessary comfort snacks and passed out immediately [Music] i'm not sure what that was in hawaii we have you know drills and alarms maybe that's what it is josh is at a coffee shop i should go we made our way back to right where we left off at the sixth gate feeling like we were learning to walk again for the first time we had to warm up [Music] oh wow it doesn't go very far don't get warmed up you gotta get warmed up for today gotta get warmed up so we're gonna try to make it all the way back around finish the loop get back to the gate that we started at we only got one major problem on the way there and that is this giant mountain called namsan there's only one today though that's that's a plus we got a long down hiking let's go despite feeling like we had aged about 200 years overnight we felt excited to be back on the road again [Music] despite what my background looks like it's a little bit colder and breezy today and we've got some precarious rain clouds above us although the rain held up pretty well yesterday it's always a little doomy and gloomy though when you start off the morning with some impending grace guys start of day two how are you feeling i remember this feeling from the second day of the camino it's like you were walking for the first time that you've ever walked in your whole life so you're trying to tell me that your spirit animal is bambi today bambi is an inspiration [Music] [Music] just over here having a full-on conversation with a cat [Music] everything just felt easy today once we got moving solas filled to the brim with incredible unique neighborhoods cafes restaurants parks there's just no wrong place to go the city wall was guiding us from highlight to highlight and all we had to do was just keep following it [Music] we happened upon this cute little village everything's so quaint and quiet and it was really sad about day one ending but day two is turning out to be just great [Music] [Music] gate number seven you can't walk through this one what is this gate called okay uh gate gate number seven did you hear me let's call again and this is it is gate number seven but yeah it is this is called [Music] you got yourself into this you get yourself out of it i'll put it down below seeing this ancient part of south korea's history right here in the middle of the city surrounded by an incredibly busy street is just the perfect analogy for this entire city preserving the history while embracing the new and somehow finding a way for it all to coexist peacefully i'm definitely butchering that or dongdaemon because it's the east gate the app has also shared with us that it is known as national treasure number one in all of south korea there's a little restaurant here called rice and school food that's open rice bowl beef bowl dumpling soup pork cutlet cheese tonkatsu [Applause] [Music] i think this place is called school lunch rice bowls i think we like the school food here a lot i wish that our food back in high school or whatever was even half as interesting as this [Music] oh that was so good we didn't stop at all yesterday for the entirety of the hike and taking a little bit of a break a breather in the middle of this pretty arduous hike it honestly makes all the difference now they have special little paving stones that show you exactly where the city wall went which which we're just gonna keep following all the way we are now walking through a markedly different area of the city wall trail get it markedly all right so we now go down like shoe alleyway here and there's this wall to wall shoes for as far as we can see [Music] continue our quest so we must cross this gigantic river stream wish me luck laughs that was terrifying who's going to play you in the movie i think i'm like leonardo dicaprio or something i told you there'd be river crossings i don't really specify what kind wellness i guess i'll be on my way now [Music] now this area definitely feels like the urban city walk that i was expecting we're in some kind of design museum and it's beautiful oh this place is so cool and interesting there's so much happening and there's so many people out there are some singers there's some cool plasticky tree light up thingies and beautiful designs [Music] the city wall just kept bringing us to more and more interesting and varied places it felt like every time we got used to a neighborhood it would surprise us with something even better back on the trail again man seoul is so cool gate number eight right here reunited with our trusty city wall friend and there is gate number eight what's this one called the eighth and final gate now this does not mean that this is over we still have to make it all the way back to where we started to finish the loop and that's what we're still doing but we made it we made it to all eight of them i don't want this to end oh don't worry we've got plenty to go yeah but this is the last gate we had just one more mountain in between us and completing the entire city wall hike the centerpiece of seoul namsan mountain as we started our way up the hike felt surprisingly easy we were floating on air our feet felt light we were so so close i love how each part of the trail that we go through feels vastly different than the other trails even though we got our trusty wall the city had turned back into park and greenery and trees we'd left behind all the noise and the hustle and the bustle and we were back to going up a mountain so it begins the views for this hike i mean i didn't have to say it just look we've made it to the final mountain last refill yep one more time of course it wouldn't be a city wall hike if there weren't more stairs along our trusty friend not the beautiful paved path that was over there nope but there's no one else here and it is much cooler [Music] oh don't trip bye luckily enough they have the steps numbered so you know just how much pain you're in 55 over to six we're just seven this is the best view we've had the whole time wow yeah we climbed that mountain and then the one to the left is right behind that tree but it's crazy to think for as much city and as many cars and trains and its modern soul is look at just how much greenery there is and how many mountains there are you would never know this was sold our last little climb before we reach this old tower almost there i don't even know what the end is anymore we still have to get to the gate so i gotta make it back down the last few miles just flew by we'd done it all we had to do is make our way back down we made it to the top right here i know we've been here before but appeal's different this time yeah such a triumphant day yeah it's all downhill from here it's all downhill from here and the last time that we were here it was overcast and kind of rainy today is sunny and so so beautiful and crowded and here's our good friend it's awesome up here no doubt lovely park but we have a quest to finish can't stay long not today cable car which one will you choose supply some ions that's what we need that's what we're missing ions ions as we started descending the mountain we started to feel a bit sad i'm getting a little emotional over here guys hey i don't want this to end the way down was easy we were just on autopilot we had been walking non-stop for two days from the time the sun went up until it went down all that was on our minds was to just keep going at the end of this we would have walked around 19 kilometers or just about 12 miles for those of you that do a lot of backpacking or hiking that probably doesn't sound like a lot to do in one day let alone two but with all the elevation gain and loss and unending stairs it just took us a while you could do this in a single day but honestly why would you the whole reason to do this is to get a little sampler pack a little bit of everything that seoul has to offer so stop at the malls of the mountaintops at the markets at the cool coffee shops the restaurants on the hill that you'll probably never pass again because they're in the middle of nowhere take your time grab a hotel whenever you get tired and then just keep going the next day you won't get bored that's for sure we passed the last few visible parts of the city wall before heading down to where we started we knew that this quest was coming to an end i trust the old friend still here leading the way we weren't ready turns out neither was seoul i don't know if it's because we're nearing the end of the day end of the walk the sun is setting and there's just everybody out grandparents children parents again just enjoying seoul and this city trail i'm kidding i'm getting a little wispy-eyed i don't know that i want this to end it was definitely a journey and sometimes you think that quests have to be this long one month arduous thing this two-day adventure was certainly arduous but it was so much more fulfilling and yeah we learned so much about soul about the history here and it's a reminder to us to just keep seeking out those quests [Music] one last little stroll left good friend there it is right there almost there okay i'm coming bye one last set of stairs of course seoul's never out of stairs that's for sure sears business and soul is doing well lots of companies making lots of stairs and then just as we got to the gate right at the finish line this happened they literally closed the finish line on us right as we got to it the whole quest the whole past two days all the amazing things and we we couldn't finish it well uh so they literally closed it right as we were we were maybe 10 feet from the door and then they kicked us out right as we walked in we were trying to get that great experience of just walking through the door that we left out of bring the whole thing full circle but uh we this isn't going to happen the guard on this side opened the gate so that we can go in and we made it about halfway like halfway we were running towards it it was so dramatic and then the guard on this side was like blew his whistle at us and told us go and we were like wait what but he just let us he just let which way do we go that gate's closed now what do we do are we do we live here he's like you gotta go and so he got his way and well here we are at least we get to see the gate i mean we came to the gates we did it we did it the whole thing we walked all the way around seoul but we didn't get to walk through the last thing so happened this is what happened so on that terrible disappointment let's go get our stuff that's the end now on the flip side i'm no longer sad that you know it's over because now i'm sad that i have no closure there's a little little hole there a little window of opportunity well if you needed another allegory for it's about the journey not the destination yeah seoul city wall trail ala lisa and josh do you want our stuff back i'm mostly just excited well nervous about how much it's gonna cost us how much was it six thousand wow yay oh gosh that's heavy this thing is way heavier than i remember so sweaty let's go yeah [Music] it does work it's really great and you can hear me talking from far away because it's super heavy that's the end of the song well even i surprised myself there it can be roll while we're walking it's a little jittery but we're walking and taking b-roll [Laughter] go on dan i think i believe that full circle loop around seoul tell them about the mountain there's a mountain yeah okay can we start this tank what do you think what are you guys talking about he's telling me all about the weather last night it was raining i guess [Music] what do you got to tell us so many things to say

Channel: Lisa and Josh

Views: 73,527

Keywords: travel, adventure, lisa and josh, josh and lisa, lisa josh, josh lisa

Id: awszLtoE10U

Length: 40min 2sec (2402 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022