Seoul is a city that stays in motion without ever feeling like it is trying to outrun you. It is enormous, yet it behaves like a quilt of smaller neighborhoods, each with its own pace and personality. Skyscrapers rise like chrome mountains, but there is room to breathe everywhere.

In December the entire place glows. Lights strung across streets, that Mariah Carey song greeting you in every doorway. Teenagers roaming in clusters, laughing into the cold. The chaos feels polite. Seoul does not overwhelm, it invites.

We stayed on the outskirts of the city for a conference and used the metro for almost all transportation. The system moves with the precision of a Swiss watch and the speed of something mildly classified. You board, blink, and find yourself on the opposite end of the city, having traveled at 175/km. The arrival chime is its own form of theater, part cheerful video game, part hotel elevator, part cowboy cartoon. So very Seoul.

Travel here unfolds through small moments that turn into memories. Making friends in an underground bowling alley. Oysters the size of a ribeye. Dinner in an Alpine ski lodge. More Lamborghinis than Los Angeles. More plastic surgery centers than Los Angeles too. A martini in a hotel bar designed like an indigo forest, with a waterfall keeping the peace.

The days filled themselves. Seoul is generous like that. Museums, temples, galleries, food halls, design stores, matcha shops, street stalls, and an endless supply of coffee. This is a city with more cafes per capita than seems statistically reasonable, and I admire the commitment. Quiet courtyards and loud markets. Seoul lives easily in both.

Here are the places that shaped our week:
• The DMZ, heavy with history
• Bukchon Hanok Village
• Fermentation Lab Bukchon Gwang
• KeunKiwajip for lunch
• Changdeokgung Palace
• Starfield Library
• White Cube Gallery
• Bongeunsa Temple
• The most extravagant Hermes and Golden Goose stores imaginable, placed for maximum temptation
• A slow walk through Gangnam
• Jellycat Space pop up (behind the times, I didn’t know this was a thing)
• Nest of Goose in Seongsu for dinner
• Spanish tapas at For The Map
• Japanese at Saunamee
• The largest Olive Young in Seoul, which deserves its own entry in the Guidebook for Cultural Phenomena
• KunstBo, for the glasses that inspired Jacques Marie Mage
• Point of View, a multi story stationery haven with creaky floors and endless curiosities

And always, the simple pleasures stood out:
Street food eaten standing
Coffee on cold mornings (by morning I mean 10:30am, because Seoul cafes open when they feel like it)

Seoul rewards wandering without purpose. It sharpens your senses without demanding your exhaustion. It is a city that knows how to move and how to give you space to move within it.

Just look past the American chains cluttering the sidewalks. Mediocrity travels too.