Free day in and around Incheon
 

we will have a 24 hour stop over in Incheon on our way to bali (may).....i have seen the many tours in and around the area, but we are wondering about personal experiences??

has anyone hired a taxi for several hours?
has anyone ventured into seoul on a shopping spree?
does anyone have a guide recomendation?
food??

we will be in a club room at the airport hyatt....

thanks

ttt

where are all the koreaofiles

getting into seoul from incheon is rather easy. you can take an airport bus to the area you want to go to (between KRW8,000 to 14,000). or you can take a taxi (approximately KRW50,000 to 70,000). it take about an hour to get into seoul from incheon.

i don't think you need a guide for seoul b/c it's a rather easy city to get around via taxi or subway. however, there is a seoul city bus tour that hits all the highlights of seoul, and you can get on and off as you please.

as for food, i would recommend hitting up one of the big department stores (lotte, shinsegae, hyundayi). the basements of the dept. stores have food courts/grocery stores. and, the top part of the dept. stores have nice places to eat.

if you don't want to venture to a lot of places, i recommend the coex. there is a bus directly from incheon to the coex. it has a dept. store, tons of other shops, an aquarium, kimchi museum, all packed in this huge underground maze.

also, for something a little different, you can visit the dragon spa at yongsan station (a bus from the airport also goes directly there). you can easily spend a few hours or all day there. it's a "bath" house, but it also several common areas to relax, eat, watch tv, and sit in steam rooms.

thanks j.....what is coex. ?

I just read an article about how wounderful the Inchon airport is. They have tours of the area to go on durring your layover. Anyone know how to get more info on these tours?

Bob at a bath house. This vision is priceless. Thank you.

coex is a huge underground shopping mall with other things to do. in addition to the dept. store, musuem, and aquarium, it's got a movie theater, two hotels, and a casino.

incheon airport is nice and is packed to the gills with duty free shopping (mostly high end stuff). it also has a sauna/spa.

you can go to this website for more information about tours:

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/index.kto

and this website has more information about the airport:

http://www.airport.kr/eng/

thanks

We stayed at the Hyatt club level in April and it was very nice. The handcreams in the department stores in Korea are to die for. I wish I would have brought more home. There is a nice park with a memorial to Gen. MacArthur's landing in Incheon. China town is nice and we went on a fun boat cruise that we boarded on the boardwalk in Incheon. The boat cruise was a hoot. The Korean's know how to party! It was during the afternoon and the boat was filled with senior citizens and they all were having a fun time, we had a fun time. They were all so friendly and wanted to shake our hands and have their pictures taken with us.

As far as food Korean BBQ is very good as is Shabu Shabu. We took the subway everywhere and some buses (even was in a bus wreck)our son lives in Incheon so he took us everywhere on the subway and buses and I was to busy looking around so I can't give you any advice on them. The subway and buses are very clean, everyone is pretty quiet on them.

Have fun in Korea! We have gone twice and I am sure we will be going again.

hester, thanks.....how did you get from the hyatt to any of the places you mention? is there a bus, or did you taxi?? we only have time for a little shopping i fear and maybe two good meals...

bob

For one of those meals, you might want to consider the Seoul branch of the Taiwanese-born DTF.

http://www.seoulstyle.com/seoul-din-tai-fung.htm


I think you could have an unforgettable few hours at one of the luxe Korean spas; I went to the one at Yongsan station, Dragon Hill, but there are others. A lot of laughs are almost guaranteed.


Look at pics here:

http://www.dragonhillspa.co.kr/hill/main01.htm

I would not count on great shopping unless you are interested in "fakes" or very high end crafts (ceramics, for example)

fakes might fit the bill for a laugh...

unfortunately we are not huge spa fans, especially my wife who hates them totally...

But this is nothing like any spa you have ever visited.

Think of it as a quintessentially Korean experience. Trust me.

Bob,
We were staying with our son in another part of Incheon and we took a bus (that's when we were in the bus wreck) to near the Hyatt and walked the rest of the way which was really short. There are a few restaurants near the Hyatt, about a three minute walk out the side of the Hyatt where the hotel restaurant is. We had a very good meal at a Thai restaurant but I don't know the name of it. The airport is really close and the Hyatt has a shuttle service to the airport.

I just got off Skype with my son in Incheon and I picked his brain about transportation. His suggestions were

1. you could ask the information help desk at the airport to help you figure the route you need. His girlfriend works at the help desk and that's their job to help.

2. The Incheon airport has a subway that only runs to Gimpo airport but you can take that and transfer there to the main subway line at Gimpo.

3. Take the bus from the airport.

Take the Incheon airport subway to Gimpo transfer to the subway 5 line and that will take you to the Palace.

Take the bus from the airport to Seoul Station (cost 9,000won=$7.00) and find a tour. There are people on the street selling tours, they have badges on saying that they sell tours. The tour we took was a hop on hop off bus. It worked really well to see the sights. We enjoyed the war museum in Seoul. The outside is really neat with all kinds of old planes.

If you have any questions I can ask him, I don't know if he can help but he might be able to. His girlfriend lives within walking distance to the Hyatt. So he knows the area.

thanks so much for the info

This is great...looks like I now don't need to post the same, as I was just about to ask this question as well, Bob.

We have a 14 hr layover (we'll arrive early am and depart at around 8 PM) so I don't think we'd get a hotel room -- unless we happen to find ourselves exhausted on arrival. I don't think we'll want to hang in the lounge either for that long an amount of time.

Alas, now I have some ideas about what we could do -- it sounds like with with the time we have it might make more sense to find stuff to do in Incheon instead of Seoul?

I assume also that since our luggage will be checked through to Bali, all we'd have to do is just go through customs/immigration -- how does that work? ...will we need to deal with visas/departure fees at all in this situation?

time is getting closer.....i'm now thinking i will leave everything until we get there and see what the hotel might suggest, or just hang in the lounge or go out for a meal...

plan a fodors GTG??

I was in Seoul in December and need to do a trip report - had a great time, though, despite sub-frezing temperatures! Not a problem for you in May.

What time do you arrive in Korea? 0800-0800 or 2000-2000 is a very different 24 hours than 1400-1400 in terms of what you would have time to see, due to travel time between Incheon and Seoul.

arrive and leave about 5PM