Top 5 Reasons to Layover In Seoul

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Long layover. Those two words can cause many travelers to groan and roll their eyes. However, we love them! We sometimes even pay extra to have a long layover in a place we haven’t visited before. Long layovers can offer glimpse of a new place, and an opportunity to scratch another country off of our scratch off map. They are also a great way to burn off some fun toddler energy after having Miss C cooped up in a plane for a bajillion hours. (Yes, a bajillion, that’s the official quantity of hours that it takes to fly anywhere with a toddler).

On our recent return to Bangkok from our fabulous summer in the USA, we booked a 15+ hour layover in Seoul, Korea. A first time for any of us to visit Korea, we were excited to catch a glimpse. I left in awe of the airport and even though it caused me to miss even more sleep on our trip home, I was glad to have done so. These are our top five reasons why you should absolutely plan a long layover in Seoul into your next trip.

1. FREE HOT SHOWERS! – I cannot

   

   say enough how much I appreciated the opportunity to be able to shower at the halfway point in our 36 hour trip. Not only do they have showers available, but they are clean, not typically very busy, and they offer towels, hair dryers, and basic toiletries – all for FREE for transit passengers. The showers are located in the “Rest and Relax Zone.” There are seven shower rooms in the East and West locations in the Passenger Terminal and ten shower rooms on the concourse. Make sure to pick up a towel and hair dryer from the front desk if you need them. Hours 7:00 AM- 10:00 PM.

2. Awesome play areas for kids – We checked out a couple of different play areas for kids inside the secured area of the terminal. The first was a super-cool airplane shaped playground with slides and fun things to climb on. This one was a bit too busy for my tiny tot who isn’t so sure-footed yet.  However, upstairs near the free showers, there is another smaller play area. While it is not nearly as exciting as the airplane one, we found it to be a better fit for Miss C. There was a padded climbing area, and a climbing wall as well as a simple padded area to run off some energy. She loved it!

   

    

3. Nursery rooms: Korea’s Incheon airport offers super awesome “Nursery Rooms” for nursing in private, changing a diaper etc. They are located throughout the airport both outside and inside of security. They had everything from a changing table, high chair and bottle warmer to a nursing pillow and baby scale! We were wishing we had rooms like this when we were flying with Miss C during the first year of her life! Incheon has definitely kept families in mind while designing their airport. Details like these make all the difference in the world to traveling families!

   

4. Cultural experience in the airport: Want to experience a bit of Korean culture on your layover but don’t have time to leave the airport? Don’t worry, you can have a great experience without ever leaving the airport. You can actually go on an “Incheon Airport Culture Tour” inside the airport! To do this,visit the “Free Korea Transit Tour” desk on the air-side near Immigration. You will visit several interesting cultural experiences within the terminal. Including the Traditional Korean Cultural Center which houses an experiential learning program for passengers awaiting International departure.  You can learn about Korean culture, and create a traditional Korean craft. However, you can also participate in any of the cultural opportunities the tour offers without actually going on the tour. Check out the Imagine Your Korea website for more info (as well as generally comprehensive info about most tourism in Korea.
5. Free transit tours: Thanks to the taxpayers of Korea, the Korean government offers free tours to transit passengers. There are eight different tour options, ranging from 1 hour to 5 hours and you can even combine the tours if you have a longer layover. Most of the tours are totally free, but two of them (including the one that we chose) have a $10 fee which includes entrance to a palace and lunch. The two tours that have the $10 fee are the 8 AM and 10 AM Seoul city tour. All of the other ones are absolutely free! While we had enough time that we could have tried a couple of the tours, we thought that 5 hours was about the maximum that we could do with a 18 month old who had already been on a 15 hour flight. So, we opted for the 5 hour tour of Seoul. To be specific, the tour that we did was called “Seoul City Tour 1” and it departed Incheon airport at 8:00 AM. We visited Gyeongbok Palace and Insadong Street.
   Gyeongbok Palace is the largest of the five main palaces and was built in 1395. Centuries before my country was discovered by Europeans. It was destroyed during the Korea-Japan war in 1592 but restored in 1865. I was a bit bummed that our tour had to leave right as the famous changing of the guards was about to happen, although we did catch just a glimpse at the start of the ceremony before speed-walking back to meet our group. The visit to the palace sparked a new interest for me to read a bit more about Korean history before our next trip there in October. I would love to know a bit more about the lives and culture of the people who lived during the time that such a beautiful palace was built.After our tour of the palace we were ready for lunch. Our tour bus dropped us off at Insadong street which is a famous traditional street with many options for food and shopping, especially if you are into antiques, and folk art. We

   

   followed our guide to a nearby restaurant and were given the choice of Bulgogi or Bimpimbap for lunch. Between the three of us, we tried both options and both were absolutely delicious.  Miss C, who typically won’t touch a bite of meat, ate an entire adult sized portion of Bulgogi – a marinated beef dish.  After lunch we had a bit of free time to walk along Insadong street and shop, or in our case, to hunt down the nearest bubble tea shop!

If you are looking for a hotel during your long layover in Incheon airport, check out these recommendations from Booking.com.

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