Seoul, Eventually
Tokyo is my favorite city, the one I keep returning to because there’s always something else hiding in the side streets. But Seoul’s been edging closer, becoming one of those places that won’t leave my head alone. I’ve been to enough cities now—New York, London, Paris, LA—that I can tell the difference between a place you visit and a place you actually want to understand. Seoul is the second kind. It’s the K-pop, the fashion, the way they’ve managed to keep modernity and tradition side by side without collapsing them into each other. And then there’s the food, the intensity around kimchi that reminds me of the way other places treat wine as a serious thing. The neighborhoods, too—Gangnam, Hongdae, Daehakno—these aren’t the tourist version of the city, they’re just how people actually live there.
I picked up the Monocle Travel Guide to Seoul almost by accident, and it’s the kind of thing that sneaks into your head before you ever land. Monocle books are meticulous—beautiful to look at, but also genuinely useful if you care about how you move through a city. This one lays out the clubs and hotels and restaurants worth knowing, the infrastructure you need if you want to spend real time somewhere instead of just passing through. It sits on my shelf now like a promise or a map or something in between.
I don’t know when I’ll actually get there. But the city can wait.