I always did a lot of research before I chose my accommodation for holiday. For our end of year holiday in Seoul, I chose to stay at Urbanwood Guesthouse for a week. The accommodation house is based in the Hongdae area, the unique and youthful area of Seoul.

The best way to reach this place is by taking taxi OR the AREX line from the airport and stop at Hongik University exit. Exit 9 is the best way exit to take, located next to KFC and a 2 min walk from the Kakao flagship store in Hongdae! 

Imagine my surprise when the accommodation exceeded what I expected... Martin Kim, the owner of the accommodation, was a very great host during our stay at Urbanwood.

We basically spent our Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and last day of staying in Korea together with Martin. He opened his 10 year old wine from Spain during the Christmas Eve party. There were a couple of late night convos as well in between our stays which made it more memorable.  

We arrived at the Urbanwood Guesthouse on the 24th of December from Jeju Island.  We took a taxi because we were afraid that public transport would be quite difficult with two large and two small luggages. Taxi costed us 35,000 KRW (around AUD $37) because we got stuck in traffic. We told the taxi driver that we could walk but he kept on trying to drive us around in his taxi without turning on his metre.

Later on in our holiday we took the metro line from Gangnam to the Incheon airport safely which was really easy and only costs us 4,400 KRW.

Christmas eve at Urbanwood was very enjoyable and we attended the Christmas Party that Martin invited us to come to. 

WiFi is readily available and there's also a computer that can be used by all guests. Each guest will be given a keycode and room key when they check in. Martin also has many  guide books available at the guesthouse which helped us planned our daily travel in Seoul.

Every morning we were provided with a nutritious breakfast. Martin's specialty was fresh fruits, bagels, cream cheese and delicious cold meat. We really missed this breakfast once we landed that we went to Coles and bought some bagels and cream cheese (hahaha).

There are three rooms at Urbanwood Guesthouse and we occupied the biggest room. I chose it because we planned to stay at Hongdae for one week and this room came with its own private bathroom and toilet.

The other two bedrooms will need to share the bathroom but don't be deterred by it because the shared bathroom was quite big and always got cleaned by Martin. 

Urbanwood Guesthouse has its own rooftop area that can be used for rooftop party in summer. In winter it got a bit too cold that we only went up there when Martin told us about the snow! Hubby was so excited that his prayer of seeing snow finally got answered. 

We didn't realise how easily accessible our accommodation was until we moved to Gangnam. The Urbanwood Guesthouse is surrounded by a lot of eateries, indie shops and only within 10 minutes walking distance to some established clubs in the area. We really missed Hongdae when we travelled to other areas in Seoul.

Urbanwood is affordable, close to the train, street and restaurant food and is a really good option I'd you're planning a trip to South Korea.