Layover in South Korea

It is hard to say no to a great flight deal, especially when it is international. Sometimes those great deals come with an extra step. We had a 9-hour layover in South Korea on our route to Singapore, which became a perfect opportunity for us to explore the country, even if we had a time constraint!

We flew United from DIA (Denver) to SFO (San Francisco). For some reason we had a difficult time finding the gate for Korean Air. After wandering around a bit, we finally found it, checked-in, went through security, and stuck around the gate till it was time to board.

Our flight was very comfortable and we were excited about getting slippers and a toothbrush for the long flight. We walked to Terminal 2 for arrivals and went through immigration. We were disappointed that they didn’t stamp our passport, but instead print out a receipt because instead of just arriving to South Korea, we had a transfer flight out of the country the same day. Going through customs was a breeze though.

As international traveler newbies, navigating an airport in a different country can be daunting. Thankfully, most signage at Incheon International Airport is easy to follow and to read so once we got through customs we were ready to explore!

While we charged our phones, we scarfed up spicy ramen in the airport then bought bus tickets to downtown, the drive time was 1 hour and 20 minutes. We thought it was so cool that the bus had WiFi and you had to wear seatbelts once it got onto the highway.

Once off the bus we just started walking around and found our way into a Starbucks. Who doesn’t want to try a Starbucks in another country? There we decided on our destination.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

http://www.royalpalace.go.kr/

The palace just opened and so there were not many people around. During this time the pandemic was going on so we wore masks as we walked around and all tour groups had been cancelled. A fun experience you can do is rent traditional royal attire down the street and wear it while walking through the palace.

After roaming the palace for a bit, we walked back to a nearby bust stop for the “airport limousine”. Oops! We didn’t have enough Won to get on. We searched for an ATM to take out more and had to wait for the next bus. Thank goodness even though we had to wait another 30 minutes or so, we made it back to the airport in time! We leisurely ate food in an AMEX-member accepted lounge then made our way to our gate to fly to Singapore.