Words by Aude Camus
Seoul had been on our list for years. Me and my husband had been once, pre-kids, and kept a beautiful memory of it. But that was 10 years ago. He then went back with friends, earlier this year, and came back with a page of notes scribbled on his phone: a wine bar in a market, a eyewear store that looked like a spaceship, a vintage football shirt shop in Itaewon. The kind of list you make when you know you'll come back, and you know it won't be alone.
So this time we came back with everyone: me, him, our six-year-old, and her little sister, who had just turned one. We've always taken the girls everywhere, and Seoul turned out to be one of the easiest big cities we've done with them. Taxis are everywhere and when ordering on Uber you don’t have to worry about the language barrier, the food is kind to small appetites, and the city has a way of folding a playground, a bakery, and a museum into the same 500 metres.
Seoul had been on our list for years. Me and my husband had been once, pre-kids, and kept a beautiful memory of it. But that was 10 years ago. He then went back with friends, earlier this year, and came back with a page of notes scribbled on his phone: a wine bar in a market, a eyewear store that looked like a spaceship, a vintage football shirt shop in Itaewon. The kind of list you make when you know you'll come back, and you know it won't be alone.
So this time we came back with everyone: me, him, our six-year-old, and her little sister, who had just turned one. We've always taken the girls everywhere, and Seoul turned out to be one of the easiest big cities we've done with them. Taxis are everywhere and when ordering on Uber you don’t have to worry about the language barrier, the food is kind to small appetites, and the city has a way of folding a playground, a bakery, and a museum into the same 500 metres.
Not going to lie, I also had my own list. Tamburins, Gentle Monster, the Louis Vuitton store in Dosan that had just been turned into a library. There was room for both. There was room for salt bread (Seoul’s viral bakery trend, tried and tested by yours truly) and a secret garden, for K-pop stores (as requested by our official K-Pop Demon Hunters 6yo fan) and a Joseon palace, for claw machines and a wine bar for which we left the girls with a babysitter and ate dinner on a terrace in a sixty-year-old market. Here's how the four days went.
Where we stayed in Seoul as a family We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul, in Gwanghwamun, and the location did most of the work for us. Gyeongbokgung Palace is a five-minute walk, Bukchon and Changdeokgung are not even thirty minutes away, and the Cheonggyecheon stream, lit up at night, runs right past the end of the street. With two kids, being able to come back to the room in the middle of the afternoon and head out again for dinner was the difference between a good day and a long one.
The rooms are big by Seoul standards, the breakfast buffet at Market Kitchen is the kind you plan your morning around, and the concierge provided so many useful tips that clearly made a difference. We were invited to dinner at Boccalino, the hotel's Sicilian restaurant, on our first full evening – pizza from the wood-fired oven, a six-year-old asleep on the banquette by the tiramisu. What can I say? We've been in enough hotels to know when one is set up for families without shouting about it.
We landed in the evening and reached the hotel at half past eight, which in Seoul is already late for dinner. My husband had booked a Korean barbecue near Jonggak; by the time the bags were in the room, the reservation had lapsed and the restaurant was closing. So we did what you do on a first night: we got in a taxi to Myeongdong, the one neighbourhood where the grills were still going at ten, and ate galbi under fluorescent lights with a one-year-old on my lap.
It wasn't the dinner we'd planned. It was exactly the dinner we needed. The girls fell asleep in the taxi back, and we settled in for a long, restorative night.
Madame tips: If you’re landing after 7pm, don't book a restaurant. Most neighbourhood restaurants take last orders around 9pm and between clearing immigration and heading to the city (a one-hour ride minimum from the airport) you won’t make it in time. Myeongdong and the area around Jongno 3-ga are your safe bets for a late first night.
Day 2: Palaces, an empty Bukchon, and a secret garden Madame tips: If you’re landing after 7pm, don't book a restaurant. Most neighbourhood restaurants take last orders around 9pm and between clearing immigration and heading to the city (a one-hour ride minimum from the airport) you won’t make it in time. Myeongdong and the area around Jongno 3-ga are your safe bets for a late first night.
This was the day I'd been most excited about, and the one with the most moving parts. It started at 8.30am, in a taxi to the ticket office of Changdeokgung Palace.
Here's the thing about the Secret Garden – the Huwon, the private royal garden behind Changdeokgung – that nobody tells you clearly: you can only enter on a guided tour, each tour is capped at a hundred people, and the online tickets are gone within minutes of release, snapped up by tour operators and concierge desks. The hotel concierge was blunt about it. Don't bother online. Half the tickets are sold at the palace ticket window at 9am. Be there at 8.45. We were, and we walked away with four tickets for the 2.30pm English tour and the palace itself.
And then we had an hour to kill in Bukchon before anything opened. Which turned out to be the best accident of the trip.
Bukchon Hanok Village is the neighbourhood of traditional Korean houses between the two palaces, and by eleven it's a river of tour groups. At nine it's empty. Completely empty. But Perment Bakeshop was opened which meant a coffee refill and my first go at salt bread. Wow, loved it! We walked up Gyedong-gil past shuttered shops and down the alleys with the tiled rooftops and the city behind them, and the only other people were a couple of residents taking their bins out. It's the moment for photos, if you want them. We came back the same afternoon when the shops were open, and it was a different place – still lovely, but a different place. My advice: do Bukchon twice. Morning for the quiet, afternoon for the shopping.
Then the hanbok. There are a dozen rental shops around Anguk station, none of them need a booking, and all of them have children's sizes. We picked 3355 Hanok and were delighted with our choice. What they don't tell you is that dressing a six-year-old who has opinions, and then having her hair done and a Korean-style make-up applied, takes an hour.
Then the hanbok. There are a dozen rental shops around Anguk station, none of them need a booking, and all of them have children's sizes. We picked 3355 Hanok and were delighted with our choice. What they don't tell you is that dressing a six-year-old who has opinions, and then having her hair done and a Korean-style make-up applied, takes an hour.
A full hour. We'd planned on twenty minutes. The upside is that the full package costs less than 500 HKD for two-hours of rental, that wearing a hanbok gets you into the palaces for free, and the photos you’ll snap will look special.
Gyeongbokgung is the big one, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty, and we entered by the east gate, which is quieter. The girls liked the pavilion on the pond; I liked watching the many tourists in hanbok running across the courtyards like a costume drama had let out for recess.
Lunch was a small miracle called Home Korean Cuisine , in Bukchon, next door to our Hanbok rental shop where we returned the outfit after visiting the palace. A quiet inner courtyard, a handful of tables, and a beef bulgogi that was homemade, delicate, plus Goji-wanja meatballs that were a hit with our youngest one. We'd planned to eat at Gwangjang Market. We didn't have time, and I'm not sure I'd swap.
The Secret Garden tour is seventy to ninety minutes on stone paths with gentle climbs – baby carrier, not pushchair – and the group doesn't wait for you. Go through the main gate twenty minutes before your slot, because the garden entrance is a fifteen-minute walk inside the grounds. And it is magnificent.
Ponds, pavilions, a forest the kings kept for themselves, and in early October the first leaves turning. Plus, once you’re in, you don’t have to follow the tour and are free to wander the open part of the gardens at your own rhythm. For me it’s a must do in Seoul.
Back in Bukchon with the shops open, we stopped again at Perment Bake Shop, which was already almost sold-out for the day but we managed to get our hands on a chocolate baguette from outer space. We loved Rye Ceramic, the studio of the ceramicist Myung Rye Kim – sublime pieces, the kind you wrap in three jumpers for the flight home.
Back in Bukchon with the shops open, we stopped again at Perment Bake Shop, which was already almost sold-out for the day but we managed to get our hands on a chocolate baguette from outer space. We loved Rye Ceramic, the studio of the ceramicist Myung Rye Kim – sublime pieces, the kind you wrap in three jumpers for the flight home.
We slowly made our way back to the hotel, stopping in every shop that caught our eyes and catching the beautiful sight of Gwanghwamun Gate glowing in the late afternoon autumn light.
By 6pm we were ready for a dip in the pool, then it was shower time. Dinner was at Boccalino (more about it in my full review of the hotel), at 7.30 pm, and at the hotel, and nobody argued after walking 25K steps that day.
Day 3: Seongsu, Itaewon, and busking in Hongdae Seongsu is the old shoe-factory district east of the city that has become its creative quarter – think Brooklyn with better bakeries – and we started at 10 am at Seoul Forest, the big flat park at its edge, with a deer enclosure and a playground, where the girls ran off their legendary energy.
From there it's a short walk to Seongsu’s main shopping street: Yeonmujang-gil.
We lost a few years in Seongsu, in the best way. Wandering, we walked into Viewmap, an eyewear store that is, and I'm quoting my husband, insane – full titanium frames, feather-light, around 100,000 won, blue-light coating thrown in, zero marketing. We both walked out with a pair.
And Osoi, a bag store I'd had on my list for years without knowing it was here: founded in Seoul in 2016, the name means "slow, unhurried" in Japanese, and the round Toni Mini bag is their it-bag. I had to get it. We also stopped at Être Bakehouse for a salt bread break.
What we didn't do in Seongsu, because of all that wandering: Haus Nowhere, Gentle Monster's fourteen-storey brutalist flagship. We'll come back for it. There's always a next time with Seoul.
By 2pm the crowd was getting quite overwhelming and we decided it was time to hail a taxi and go to a slightly less busy neighbourhood: Hannam-dong .
Lunch was hot dogs at DogDogDog in Hannam (well that’s the thing when traveling with kids, you often have to swap the gourmet local meal for an easy, efficient option. And that’s ok!), across the street from 123 Gelato , which solved dessert. Then the afternoon we'd really come for: Itaewon-ro, the long flat street through Hannam where the flagships are lined up like a lookbook. Hetras and Tamburins , side by side – two superb stores, but what stayed with me was the service: someone walking you through every scent on a strip, unhurried, as if you were the only customer. Nonfiction , the Korean unisex fragrance brand, next door. And then, for my husband, Seoul Soccer Club , a tiny shop of vintage football shirts from the nineties, all in perfect condition, where he spent longer than I spent at Tamburins. Compromise, again.
We went back to the hotel for two hours. I can't stress this enough with a one-year-old: the afternoon nap in the room is not lost time, it's what makes the evening possible. And the evening was Hongdae. Take a taxi to Hongik University station exit 9 and you're on the pedestrian street where the dance crews perform on Friday nights – by seven there were already three groups going, and our daughter watched with her mouth open. The arcades are on the same street. We went into one with a ground floor of claw machines and a first floor of basketball and shooting games, set a budget in 500-won coins, and won two rather big soft toys, which is the correct outcome.
What we didn't do in Seongsu, because of all that wandering: Haus Nowhere, Gentle Monster's fourteen-storey brutalist flagship. We'll come back for it. There's always a next time with Seoul.
By 2pm the crowd was getting quite overwhelming and we decided it was time to hail a taxi and go to a slightly less busy neighbourhood: Hannam-dong .
Lunch was hot dogs at DogDogDog in Hannam (well that’s the thing when traveling with kids, you often have to swap the gourmet local meal for an easy, efficient option. And that’s ok!), across the street from 123 Gelato , which solved dessert. Then the afternoon we'd really come for: Itaewon-ro, the long flat street through Hannam where the flagships are lined up like a lookbook. Hetras and Tamburins , side by side – two superb stores, but what stayed with me was the service: someone walking you through every scent on a strip, unhurried, as if you were the only customer. Nonfiction , the Korean unisex fragrance brand, next door. And then, for my husband, Seoul Soccer Club , a tiny shop of vintage football shirts from the nineties, all in perfect condition, where he spent longer than I spent at Tamburins. Compromise, again.
We went back to the hotel for two hours. I can't stress this enough with a one-year-old: the afternoon nap in the room is not lost time, it's what makes the evening possible. And the evening was Hongdae. Take a taxi to Hongik University station exit 9 and you're on the pedestrian street where the dance crews perform on Friday nights – by seven there were already three groups going, and our daughter watched with her mouth open. The arcades are on the same street. We went into one with a ground floor of claw machines and a first floor of basketball and shooting games, set a budget in 500-won coins, and won two rather big soft toys, which is the correct outcome.
Dinner was at Haha & Kim Jongkook's 401 Restaurant, a Korean bbq place specialising in grilled pork belly which we picked because it had good reviews. We were the only tourists, which for me is always a good sign, and enjoyed the no-fuss experience thoroughly. Both girls happily eat their share of meat and rice.
We then went back for another round of claw machines and music groups watching on Eoulmadang-ro (Hongdae’s main street).
Day 4: A Louis Vuitton library, a queue for salt bread, and a market dinner for two We then went back for another round of claw machines and music groups watching on Eoulmadang-ro (Hongdae’s main street).
Saturday was a public holiday in Korea – National Foundation Day – so we stayed away from the palaces. Instead, we opted for a slow morning with a swim for the girls with their dad while I was indulging in the art of Korean bathing at the hotel (more about it my full review of the property). We then had a late breakfast and hopped on a taxi to cross the river to Dosan, the quiet, expensive corner of Gangnam where the big houses put their concept stores.
The Louis Vuitton store in Dosan had reopened three weeks earlier as La Bibliothèque: the façade is a row of giant book spines in orange, green and pink, inside there are reading tables and green library lamps, and there's a stamp station our daughter took very seriously. It's a store that gets redone every few months, so by the time you read this it may be something else; it's worth checking what. Haus Dosan , Gentle Monster's original four-storey space with Tamburins and the Nudake cake café, is five minutes away. We also tried a few Korean menswear stores for my husband.
Lunch was a queue. J ayeondo Sogeumppang is the salt bread bakery everyone in Seoul has an opinion about, and the Dosan branch had a line down the street. My husband stood in it. I took our daughter next door to a caricaturist, who drew her portrait in the time it took him to reach the counter. Two souvenirs for the price of one wait, and the bread – crisp underneath, buttery inside, four to a bag – was worth it.
Then, instead of the aquarium we'd pencilled in, we went back across the river to Itaewon and did the thing we'd missed the day before: the small streets that climb. Gyeongnidan-gil, Haebangchon, Usadan-ro. No plan, no list, a stroller, a slow afternoon of cafés and vintage shops and murals. We were back at the hotel by quarter past five.
Lunch was a queue. J ayeondo Sogeumppang is the salt bread bakery everyone in Seoul has an opinion about, and the Dosan branch had a line down the street. My husband stood in it. I took our daughter next door to a caricaturist, who drew her portrait in the time it took him to reach the counter. Two souvenirs for the price of one wait, and the bread – crisp underneath, buttery inside, four to a bag – was worth it.
Then, instead of the aquarium we'd pencilled in, we went back across the river to Itaewon and did the thing we'd missed the day before: the small streets that climb. Gyeongnidan-gil, Haebangchon, Usadan-ro. No plan, no list, a stroller, a slow afternoon of cafés and vintage shops and murals. We were back at the hotel by quarter past five.
And at quarter past six we left again, just the two of us. Vin Vin is a modern European restaurant and wine bar run by a chef with a Michelin background, and it sits inside Sinheung Market in Haebangchon – a covered market from 1968 that has filled up with wine bars and workshops without losing the old stalls.
The market itself is the thing. We had a drink first at Gil Bar Dak, a few doors down, then dinner on Vin Vin's terrace, with the lights of the market around us and the N Seoul Tower above. If you have one night with a babysitter in Seoul, spend it here.
Day 5: One more baguette, one more alley The market itself is the thing. We had a drink first at Gil Bar Dak, a few doors down, then dinner on Vin Vin's terrace, with the lights of the market around us and the N Seoul Tower above. If you have one night with a babysitter in Seoul, spend it here.
Our flight was in the early afternoon, and we did what we'd both quietly wanted to do: we walked back to Anguk, bought the chocolate baguette at Perment one more time, and took it into the alleys of Bukchon for a last slow loop before the taxi. The shops were just opening. The light was the same as the first morning. And just like that, our long weekend in Seoul was over.
Which neighbourhood should we stay in with children?
Gwanghwamun or Jongno, no question. You're walking distance from both palaces and Bukchon, taxis to everywhere else are fifteen to thirty minutes, and you can come back for a nap. Gangnam is further from the things a six-year-old will remember.
Is the Secret Garden worth it with kids?
Yes, if your child can manage ninety minutes of walking. Buy tickets at the palace ticket window at 9am – be there at 8.45 – rather than fighting for the online ones. Bring a carrier for the baby; the paths are stone and the group doesn't wait.
Should we rent hanbok?
Absolutely, and budget an hour for it, not twenty minutes, if your daughter wants her hair and make-up done. Entry to the palaces is free in hanbok, and the photos in an empty Bukchon at 9am are the ones you'll frame.
Do we need Korean to get around?
No. Use Naver Map or Kakao Map (Google Maps doesn't do walking or driving directions in Korea) and the Uber app for taxis. Most menus in Itaewon, Seongsu and Hongdae are in English.
Pushchair or carrier?
Both. Itaewon-ro, Seoul Forest, Dosan and the palace courtyards are flat and easy with a pushchair. The hillside streets of Itaewon, the Secret Garden and Bukchon's alleys are carrier territory.
Is Seongsu worth it with kids?
Very. Seoul Forest for running, Kwangya for the K-pop fix, a bakery every hundred metres, and the stores are mostly happy to have children in them. Give it a full morning; we gave it half and regretted it.
Is Hongdae too much for a six-year-old?
Not at seven on a Friday. The busking is the best free show in the city, the arcades are right there, and the restaurants on the Sangsu side are quiet. Leave before nine.
How many days?
Three full days was right for us. Four would have given us Haus Nowhere, the Leeum museum and Gwangjang Market, all of which we skipped.
When should we go?
Early October was perfect: 15 to 22 degrees, the first leaves turning in the Secret Garden, and the Chuseok holiday just over. Check the public holidays – the Saturday we were there was one, and the palaces would have been packed.