Galapagos - Day 3: Hello Gemini

Alright, so my previous description of how we were getting to the ship was a bit off. We are boarding a flight in Quito that STOPS in Guayaquil and then eventually lands in Isla Baltra where we will board the ship. I also had the name of our cruise ship wrong -- we are actually on the Gemini - pretty apropos, eh? 

So...the 4:30 wakeup call ended up being somewhat unnecessary because I woke up at midnight. I think my body was like "oh this is your six PM nap" -- I caught maybe another 60-90 minutes after that but gave up entirely by 2am. Packed the suitcases, rolled them outside to be picked up, had some tea and bread at the breakfast, and on the shuttle bus by 6. Arrived at the airport and through security WAY too early in my opinion (6:30 or so for a 8:10 departure). I guess it's a good thing there were some shops and lounges available. 

I tried really hard to convince Baba to get this hat:

Yes this was in the domestic airport too (sorry L&R, we did not stop and get anything here). 

With so much time, we stopped in the lounge to get a second breakfast. Nainai had mentioned this cool fruit - hard on the outside, looks kind of like an orange. 

Turns out it is passion fruit! (I've never had one whole like this before - I think L&R would say the crunch of the seeds was very satisfying.

The view from the lounge was also not bad:

Couple interesting things about the flight: 1) Before arriving, the flight attendants had to treat all of our luggage with some sort of ecological WHO spray, so they walked down the aisles opening every baggage compartment, spraying the luggage, and closing it again. Felt bad for the people with fragrance allergies...maybe I just had guava on the mind but it smelled kind of fruity. 2) The airport where we landed was so small that the pilot had to land on the single runway and then then around at the end so that they could come back to the actual terminal. Here is my first sighting of Darwin's Playground!

Literally walking from the plane to the terminal we passed our first giant iguana. Eating a cactus leaf no less!

After collecting our bags, we zipped off on a zodiac adventure...

Ok a very short adventure -- just a seven minute ride or so to get to our home of the next week: National Geographic Gemini!

There were no Disney characters or decorations, but it's a fairly nice room still. This was the cheapest cabin available - so no balcony, just an oceanview window. 

We went through the obligatory muster drill and then got our first educational lecture - just a quick intro to the Islands, their formation, the endemic animals, and our planned voyage. 

After a short break to get changed, we were off on our first expedition! Zodiac exploration ride among the mangroves at Black Turtle Cove on the Santa Cruz island. Not five minutes into the ride....we come upon a group of blue footed boobies:

Here's a female looking straight at me:

And the lone male of the crew (notice how his feet are a more sea green color compared to the female cornflower blue). 

There were also some gnarly Sally Lightfoot crabs. We saw them feeding on a jellyfish at the dock earlier. 

A shot to convey how close to the birds we could get.

Also passed by some whitetip and blacktip reef sharks.

And a TON of turtles. Floating, eating, we even came upon a couple mating sessions. I'd say more but this is a family friendly blog, let's just say apparently turtles and humans share some similarities...

Can you spot the warbler?

It was pretty cool how the birds would just stay there and pose for you. We saw a bunch but I'll just keep one more photo here:

Ok one more. I don't recall what these even are. 😆 

The sun was setting (read: it was getting colder) and I was getting hungry. So I was glad to be heading back. Here's a cool shot of the cacti landscape against the skyline. 

The guides were great -- very very knowledgeable - the zodiac was very nimble and the fellow guests were polite and pleasant -- all in all, a very successful first expedition! All smiles on the way back home to dinner. 

Toasting to the start of a great vacation! Calling it an early night today because excursions start at 6:20am tomorrow...jury is out on whether Baba and I will make the first one.

Good night from the middle of the ocean!

Galapagos - Day 2: Quito & Mitad del Mundo

My plan had been to sleep in as much as possible to catch up on sleep debt...well...that plan unfortunately failed due to a hotel wide fire alarm that went off at 7:30. I guess my not being able to fall back asleep after that was for the best as the front desk later delivered some forms from our cruise operators informing me the wake up call tomorrow would be at 4:45AM!! Yeah, that's 1:45AM California time. Yeesh. 

Today I had a fairly full day of meetings planned but there were a couple hours before the West Coast day would begin, so we piled into Yeye and Nainai's rental car for some exploration. First stop: Teleferico Quito -- or apparently as some have dubbed it: TeleferiQo. This cable car takes you up to the top of the Pichincha Volcano where there are some fantastic views. Unfortunately, I had to stay at the bottom to take all of my work calls. I heard after the fact that I should have gone up and sat in the coffee shop with amazing views of Quito (I think that's a more visible shot of Cotopaxi). 

The others report that it was a nice ride up, pretty long, maybe 15 min or so? Some options for hiking around at the top and also mountain biking too -- apparently Yeye kept scanning the mountain looking for ways to back country ski down. 

First attraction: check! 

Now it was time to drive down to Old Town. The original plan was to do a quick skip over, find a place where they could park and I would continue taking my calls. Well...turns out this is the weekend of Quito's birthday celebration or something like that. Cue LOTs of crowds and mobs of cars. We literally spent about 90 minutes circling around the tiny streets of Quito before we called it quits. Here are some shots from the car. I was trying to capture a shot of all the wires strung up EVERYWHERE (no wonder I had great reception throughout the ride!) and all the broken glass shards that they would put at the top of each wall to prevent thieves from scaling over (very reminiscent of Rio). Unfortunately I didn't manage the latter, but at least you can sort of catch all the wires (the picture really doesn't do it justice). 

The traffic was really endless. As evidenced by the large number of vendors hawking drinks, snacks, and random things to all the cars moving at a crawl speed. 

Here is the Church of Santo Domingo right at the heart of the Historical Center of Quito. 

And also a shot of Basilica del Voto Nacional (Basilica of the National Vow) - very cool looking!

After we realized stopping somewhere was not going to be very easy (much less finding decent parking), we decided the tour from the car was going to have to suffice. Off to our next stop: lunch. We considered this option in honor of L&R...(yes apparently Ecuador enjoys boba too!)

But opted eventually for this local diner instead. Very authentic -- everyone else there was a local family or group of coworkers it seemed. Prices were extremely reasonable, like $3 for one plate. Chow down time!

With lunch (and perhaps a quick gelato stop) in our bellies, we went off to the true highlight of the day: Mitad del Mundo! (Middle of the World). I am being slightly facetious. I am pretty sure I was the only one who was super excited -- I mean being able to be at the single point in the world where you are in both the eastern AND western hemispheres AND North and South of the Equator? Gotta do it, no?!? As the museum exhibit would tell us -- this is THE most popular tourist attraction in all of Ecuador.

Update: turns out that is not the coolness of the location. Though my explanation would be a lot better and more unique, no? Turns out it's only famous because this is the location where a French scientist back in the day confirmed the location of the Equator. I guess that's less geographically cool but a bit more historically relevant?

Obligatory trick shot. There are some others of us balancing the ball on the tops of our heads but this one seemed a bit more tasteful:

Requisite shot of me straddling the N/S line:

It was actually a surprisingly well built out little area. Had we arrived earlier in the day, I could have seen us check out more of the side exhibits and shops and such. There was even a little museum with some science exhibits that include a toilet that swirls the other direction (Baba tells me that is a hoax, which is probably true, but who cares - it still seems cool 😆). It did remind me of some of the tourist parks that we visited in Xian, fewer people though (didn't even have to use AI to remove any people from this shot):

You could actually take an elevator to the top of the monument which had some decent views of the area. 

This is also where I had the first-time-in-my-life experience of looking unusual enough (read: apparently East Asian tourists don't get out here much?) that a bunch of kids actually stopped me and asked to take a photo WITH me. I was very confused. I  thought they wanted me to help them take a photo! I hear this used to be a fairly common experience for Yeye and Nainai in China (20 years ago...I feel like Westerners are a bit more common throughout China now) but this was my first experience in being the foreign curiosity during travel.

As we finished up here the sun was starting to get lower in the sky so we called it a day and set off for the rental car return office. How was driving in Quito? Well...a mix I would say. Merging in/out at roundabouts and certain exit turns can get a little hairy. You definitely have to be a bit aggressive otherwise people behind you will complain. The roads were in generally pretty good condition, but be prepared for a LOT of large speed bumps even on main thoroughfares. I think I probably would just opt for the taxi if I were to return.

Once back at the hotel, we met up with the National Geographic representative, got our luggage tags, our water bottles, and a run down of what to expect tomorrow. All sounded pretty good except for the 4:45 start time. With that in mind, we did a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant (satisfactory, not great, also very overpriced compared to lunch, but great for convenience and peace of mind in food safety for consumption). Got luggage tags placed on our bags and off to bed by 9:30.

Tomorrow: Galapagos!

Galapagos - Day 1: Hola Ecuador!

We are off on a new adventure! This time we are traveling with Yeye and Nainai only, no L&R. Why you ask? Honestly I wasn't sure they would enjoy it enough to be worth the cost. Kid-ing aside (haha, get it?), L&R have school and their willingness to do multi hour hikes remains questionable. So, a childless vacation! I'm really glad we are traveling with Yeye and Nainai though, as retired academics with PhDs in biology, I feel like the Galapagos is like their Disney Cruise. In the same way that it's fun to travel to Disneyland with a toddler because of how excited they become, I am hoping their excitement over Darwin's playland will make me all that more excited by association too. 

Traveling to South America is always a bit misleading. You think hey, it's only two or three hours time difference! Must be a short hop over there. Wrong. In order to get to the Galapagos Islands, we are taking an 8am flight to Miami, laying over for 2 hours, then another 4 hour flight to Quito. We will catch another mini flight from Quito to Guayaquil on Saturday morning and then board the cruise from Guayaquil (I think). I say I think because this is my least planned trip perhaps ever -- we just booked with National Geographic for the Lindblad Endeavor II -- everything else was taken care of for us. Hotels before and after, all excursions on the cruise -- everything is included in the one booking. No planning! Just pack and go! This must be how Baba feels when he goes on all of our trips...

The flight in was fairly uneventful -- we are actually getting in a full day in advance because I definitely did NOT want to risk a delayed flight causing us to miss the cruise departure. I actually got a LOT of work done on the flight and even took a call from the Admirals lounge in Miami on the layover. This was my first time using the Oneworld Sapphire benefit for Admirals access - it was less crowded than Centurion for sure but I think the food was not as tasty.  Big plus to there being no wait though. 

Here is a photo of Quito from the plane as we are landing (I hear that may be Cotopaxi in the faint faint background with snow at the top). 

We had been warned by Yeye and Nainai who arrived a couple days before us that customs could take awhile. Luckily I think there are less flights arriving at 11pm so we got through fairly quickly...though I could definitely see how slow it could have been -- they asked a lot more questions than any other immigration check I've been through lately!

I was not aware that Ecuador was so big on their roses. There were displays at immigration, baggage claim, everywhere. 

We are staying at the Wyndham Quito Airport, which must be fairly established in Quito because they even have their logo on the airport directions next to all the rental car companies. It was super easy to find their desk attendant, who then walked us to the waiting shuttle. 

And here we are at our final destination for the night! Room is pretty standard, nothing to exclaim over but decently sized, seems clean, etc. 

Arrival day complete! Tomorrow is not going to be super exciting either as I've got a fair number of work meetings scheduled. Hoping I manage to get a couple hours in the afternoon to check out the "Center of the World" (I hear it's super touristy, but you know how much of a sucker I am for things like that! 😆). 

Until tomorrow!

Seoul - Final Thoughts

Photos of our individual hauls (we helpfully separated them into beauty, snacks, and clothes)!

Clearly it was a productive trip. 😆 

Thoughts on Seoul:

1. Makeup-forward. For all of the clean beauty/skincare focus there is, I actually felt like most of the local folks (office workers, store keepers, restaurant staff, etc) actually wore quite a bit of makeup. Maybe the key is that on camera, it gives more of a natural look? Or maybe this was just a misunderstanding of mine. 

2. Less tourists. Compared to Tokyo/Japan, Seoul was MUCH less overrun with tourists. We really didn't have much of a wait anywhere and it didn't feel like we were pushing through crowds all the time. 

3. English-lite. I was consistently surprised by the number of times we found ourselves unable to communicate -- even in some of the tourist areas, it seemed like people didn't speak any English. The difference from Japan was that the Koreans also didn't seem as familiar with Google translate or other app/live translation options. I should have learned how to say "please say it again" in Korean -instead I would just hold up my phone and gesture to it and they'd look at me blankly. 😆 

4. Cash is helpful. If you don't have any, you should also be okay...but especially at the smaller stands/stalls -- some literally would only take cash. And there were a few places where paying in cash got a not insignificant discount.  It also made bargaining sometimes easier (sorry, I literally only have 10000 won...)

5. Recycling separation is not a joke. Koreans take their trash type separating very seriously. I kept worrying that we'd get in trouble for putting the plastic stuff in paper or compost in trash. This might be significant enough that I'd pick a hotel over an Airbnb next time...

6. Like Japan, jet lag is not bad. Yes we got tired around 6 or 7 pm, but it really is nothing compared to how difficult transitioning in China normally is. 

7. Downloading Naver is necessary for map navigation. Google maps can find locations but it can't navigate. Especially for walking, Naver was key. But I found the Google maps reviews/recommendations pretty helpful..so maybe use a combination of both.

8. Kakao and Uber both worked well. Uber was the only one that seemed to allow for adding mid-journey stops though, in case that is important. UberXL didn't seem that prevalent, though the price seemed similar if you could get one. 

9. Common clothing suppliers. The items at all of the shops (whether they be standalone boutiques or shops in a mall or stalls in a shopping complex) were actually often quite similar. By the end of the trip, we would see the same jacket in a variety of places, just with different prices. More reason to go to Gotomall first! 😁 

10. Olive Young (especially for on sale items) did have better prices than most of the other beauty shops.  There might be exceptions, but you'd have to really know prices and products to find the deals. 

11. Plan for extra luggage space. If I had more room, I would have bought more!

12. Air Premia - I think the Wi-Fi is a ploy - it wasn't working on any of the flights any of us took. So make sure you download things before you go! But otherwise I can vouch for the legroom being more generous so I would be willing to take the airline again. 

13. Air quality was not great - I wasn't expecting this, but it turns out Seoul actually deals with quite a bit of smog. The local folks complain that it's blowing over from the factories in China. It didn't interfere with anything, but if you have asthma/respiratory issues, just make sure you bring your meds.

Other thoughts:

Would I come back again? Absolutely. I think the twins would love it -- we will have to add this to our list of family trip destinations. Maybe 2027? Or even 2026 Thanksgiving! Will get the palace and temples in there too then. How expensive was it? Not very -- I actually thought it was cheaper than Japan, particularly in the way of taxis, snacks, and hotels. Beauty treatments actually weren't as cheap as I was expecting, but certainly still better than the equivalents in the US. 

Favorite snacks:

The milk cookie things (cheese flavor personally). Red bean pastries (the ones from Costco are individually wrapped and last about 3 weeks -- they were the kids favorite snack that I brought back). Flat croissants (they press them and then it almost gets caramelized). Salt bread - it was worth the hype. 

Favorite meals:

Maybe all of them? I really can't pick a favorite. Bossam, Korean bbq, gimbap, fried chicken, and hotteok were the highlights. 

Regrets:

If anyone goes back to Costco, can you pick up one of these bags for me? 

1H grabbed one but Y and I missed it -- so regretful. Also sad I didn't get the makeover...will definitely do that next trip. 

That's all I can think of for now...thanks for reading! 

Next destination: Galapagos! 

Seoul - Day 6: Gotomall & Herbal Medispa

I can't believe we are already on the day of departure! So sad. The day started with one last round of US-time work calls/emails -- I did sleep in all the way to 6am today though...adjusting just in time to start the trip back to California 😂. We did some last minute rearranging of purchases without our respective checked baggage/carry-on luggage to confirm how much space we had left for additional purchases -- conclusion: not much!

We didn't have a ton planned for today given our flights in the evening -- Y and H wanted to hit up one last shopping mecca: Gotomall underground shopping center. Luckily the very first restaurant we saw upon entering Gotomall was a gimbap shop! This was something we had been wanting to do all trip. We got orders of the fish roe, bulgolgi, and spicy pork. Happy to report that all three were DELICIOUS. This ranks very high on the list of culinary satisfaction moments for the trip.

Each piece was packed with meat and veggies -- very little rice around the sides. All the veggies were shredded too so each bite was such a nice melding of the ingredients. 

With full bellies, we embarked on the shopping. I have to say it was a little overwhelming. It reminded me a lot of Xiushuijie (Silk Market) in Beijing circa 2008 - I'll have to visit again next trip to Beijing to see how that has changed.

If/when we come back for a family vacation, I think Baba would stay home and L and R would spend an entire day here. Okay maybe Baba would have to come just to keep watch of all the shopping bags. 

I hear that H and Y didn't even get to explore much beyond the first 500 meters or so -- but they both report that we should have started our clothes shopping here. The prices were lower here than anywhere else we went this trip. Next time we will know better!

While they were shopping, I decided last minute to accompany V on a visit to this Chinese medicine/herbal diet supplement medi-clinic (Vyneherb) to round out my K-beauty research trip. Turned out to be very informative/comprehensive!

The interior of the office was very impressive too -- very new and high-end looking. You had to take off your shoes upon entering so you wouldn't stuff up their white floor. 😆 

I did this skin scanning thing where they had me stick my head into this tunnel and then took pictures from three sides using three different types of camera filters to gauge my moisture levels, soil levels, bacteria, pore sizing and shape, wrinkles, age spots, and redness. 

The results were a little surprising -- I am doing fairly well on age spots and wrinkles and moisture, my biggest problem seemed to be elasticity (so lack of collagen!) and drooping in my smile lines area. I have more oil in my T zone area (all over the nose and a little on my forehead). And my pores are a little large, particularly around my forehead and nose and mouth. So I guess I'll focus on cleaning my T zone and use more of those wrinkle strips around my mouth. They recommended some massaging exercises for my face and said to really spend a longer time massaging in serums and moisturizers so they take effect. My best result was sun damage! I'm above average by 7 points there 😆 -- all the sunscreen use is working!

We also did a body scan where they put these sensors on our ankles and wrists to measure BMI, visceral fat, etc. 

My results here were good for internal health (visceral fat, cholesterol, diabetes risk, etc)...though they said ideally I would weigh 10 pounds less. Sigh, I guess I knew that too. 

As with the other clinic we visited on this trip, there were a LOT of staff involved - someone to consult about the body stuff, someone else for the skin stuff, and then prep people, actual doctors, etc -- this clinic had very few customers (V's friend is a friend of the head doctor - this seems like a trend -- maybe there are so many clinics and doctors that everyone in Korea is good friends with at least one head doctor 😆). 

We both decided to try out this body sculpting/muscle building treatment. Then for weight loss, they basically had two options: serum shots or supplements. V opted for the diet suppression supplements while I went for the serum.

First we did the machines -- I have seen this advertised in the states as well -- basically the machines target your muscles to make them feel like they got workouts -- it uses radio frequency pulses and sort of jiggles all your muscles through these bands.

I was low on time so I couldn't do the sauna portion where you flush out your impurities -- so I moved on to the serum injection -- so I have to be honest, when they were describing the treatment during the consultation, I didn't actually understand that they were injections -- because the way it was described, I thought it was a bunch of little pricks -- like a series of acupuncture needles (they DO keep referring to themselves as based in Eastern/Chinese medicine!) -- not like individual shots where they inject chemicals. Well...I was mistaken. The consultant lady also had assured me that it wouldn't really hurt and they don't even bother with local anesthesia because of that...well...that was incorrect as well. Turns out she just has a very high personal pain tolerance level -- actually maybe all Koreans do since they're more used to doing these treatments every year? Because for this newbie, I have to report that it actually hurt quite a bit! But after she did the first shot and I realized this, I also only had like 20 minutes left before we had to leave to go to the airport so didn't really time to stop for anesthesia (also I'm not really sure they could have offered anesthesia anyhow, not being connected with a hospital like the ID clinic). At least the sting wore off after a couple minutes, but the whole process was way more painful than Ulthera. I asked them to focus on my upper back -- they did keep emphasizing how they were injecting 100% natural ingredients instead of steroids and more foreign supplements that are common in the Western lipolysis, so it was much more healthy for the body.  If you are interested in visiting, they do have English and Mandarin language capabilities.

V on the other hand opted out of the injections and instead left with a TON of supplements. 

We will both have to report back in a few months to see how they our respective methods worked!

So this rounded out my K-beauty research experiences for the trip -- truly down to the wire -- went directly from the Medispa to the airport. We all came with small suitcases inside most empty big suitcases and left with both filled to the max.

Such a great trip! The tax refund process was fairly straightforward...note that the windows will give you USD but the exchange rate is not great. The machine kiosks will only give you won, unless you're a Chinese national, in which case they'll give it back to your wechat or alipay.  If you visit the tax refund in Myeongdong (apparently next to the Nike store?) you can get it back on your card (which I didn't know until I got home). Oh well - I guess I have cash ready for the next trip! 

Farewell Seoul -- we had an amazing time. General thoughts and tips to follow in final post!