When expectation isn't the same as reality...

Ah Seoul, you let me down this time.

I usually enjoy taking a trip to Seoul for food, shopping, and a larger variety of activities.  But this time, it disappointed me.  A group of friends and I headed up to the capital city for a day of shopping over the long weekend last weekend, hoping to find some nice winter clothes before chilly temperatures set in.

The trip up started fun, with us snagging seats in KTX's movie car, where you can watch a whole movie over the duration of your trip.  We watched "Killer Elite," which despite being a little confusing at first, turned out to be a better movie than what I was expecting.  Upon arriving at Yongsan Station, we headed over to Myeongdong to meet up with our friends already in Seoul.

The first sign that this trip would not end well was probably our lunch at TGIFriday's.  This was one of the few places in Myeongdong that offered a varied menu of non-Korean food, but its service was sorely lacking in comparison to Gwangju's TGIFriday's.  It was also more extravagantly-priced, most likely because of its ritzier location.  In the end, we were all underwhelmed with our experience there.  We didn't want to let that dampen our enthusiasm for shopping, however.

H&M was our first stop for shopping, as clothes there are nicely made and reasonably priced with a good variety of sizes available.  Unfortunately, this was not the case.  I was not impressed with the range of fashion choices available for this fall/winter, and anything cute that I did find didn't come in larger sizes above XS or S. Where were all the options that H&M usually had?

Forever 21 didn't fare much better, as most of this season's fashion is atrocious and leans towards the slouchy, sloppy style that I will never be able to pull off no matter how hard I try.  I did manage to find a nice black blazer for work and a cute, colorful scarf, but nothing else appealed to me.  Dejected, we filed back onto the subway and headed to the bus terminal to return to Gwangju.