Salt Bread, Suitcases, and the Beginning of Goodbye
This morning, I slept in.
At least… I think I did?
I swear I set an alarm. Maybe I just slept through it. Maybe my body overruled my brain. Or maybe — for once — I was supposed to sleep.
By the time I crawled out of bed, breakfast was long over, and checkout loomed. My stomach was growling. My soul needed caffeine. The clock read 10:30. Checkout was at 11. Or was it 12? Whatever it was, time was not on my side, and I needed to move.
One of the best things about staying at the Ibis in Insadong was that right across the street, the hanok-lined alleys came to life each morning with the quiet charm of old Seoul. I threw on clothes and bolted across the street to my favorite salt bread shop — no line, no crowd, just me and the baker. I told him I was going to miss this place, especially since it had become a favorite and he’d become a friend. He smiled and slipped an extra roll into my bag without a word. That gesture hit me harder than I expected.
From there, I set my sights on Mammoth Coffee, my favorite coffee to go with my favorite food, how could a day start any better… only to find a sign taped to the door: Closed. No explanation. Just closed. One final heartbreak on our last morning. But then, like a sudden spark, I remembered the first café I ever visited in Korea — a tiny green building with a yellow roof just around the corner. We’d tried to go back a few times during the trip, but it had always been closed.
Not today.
I turned the corner and saw it: open, warm, waiting. My heart skipped. It felt like the universe was tying off a thread. I walked up, ordered confidently in Korean, and made light small talk — nothing fancy, but it was fluid. A full conversation I had once struggled through, now handled with grace. I walked away with my Americano in hand, satisfied. Full circle moment: complete.
Back at the hotel, I ran up to my room to grab my bags just in time — the housekeeping cart was only one room away. I slung everything over my shoulder, including the box of things I’d decided to leave behind, and headed down to the lobby. Our group’s luggage had multiplied. I’d arrived in Korea with just a carry-on. I was leaving with two checked bags and a very full heart — and I wasn’t alone. The lobby was a sea of suitcases. Every single one of us had shopped more than planned, and the evidence was stacked in front of us.
While others ran off for last-minute errands or sightseeing, I settled into a sunny corner of the lobby with my laptop and started to write. I needed the stillness. I needed to pause and feel everything that had happened over the past month. The weight of it all — the people, the language, the food, the challenges, the joy — started to sink in. And then the bus arrived. And just like that… we were leaving.
I stopped by the front desk one last time to say goodbye to a hotel staff member I’d gotten to know. “I hope you’ll visit again soon,” they said. I told them I would. And I meant it.
We began piling into the bus, our group moving slowly, like gravity itself was trying to hold us in Seoul. With so much luggage, the bus sat low and tilted slightly — a physical reminder that we were bringing a lot back with us. Tangible and intangible alike. From my seat on the left, I watched the hotel slip from view. Then Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁) passed by — the same palace I had photographed on my very first day in Korea. Now it was the last landmark I saw before we merged onto the highway.
Our entry into Seoul had been full of bridges and winding roads. Our exit was swift. Direct. Unceremonious. And then we were gone.
The airport hotel near Incheon felt like it had stepped out of a ‘90s fever dream — dim hallways, dark wood paneling, heavy curtains, vintage sconces casting pools of light. The room was enormous, with massive windows overlooking the airport runway and a control panel for the lights that looked like it had been built by NASA in 1982. Everything from the lights to the AC to the TV ran off a single remote the size of an iPad. It was strange, foreign, and oddly comforting.
Dinner was at the hotel buffet. It smelled incredible — rich, warm, nostalgic in a way I couldn’t quite place. But something was different now. The closeness we’d all shared during the trip had thinned. Conversations felt stilted. There was a strange, heavy silence between us — not unkind, but distant. We were slipping out of sync, already half-transitioned back to our own lives back home. After dinner, a few of us lingered in the lobby and tried the hotel’s massage chairs. They were the kind of chairs that made you wonder if your spine had ever been aligned correctly before. In any other moment, we would’ve been howling with laughter. Instead, we sat quietly, each of us deep in thought.
That night, I coordinated with my husband for the next day’s pickup. Then I sat in the quiet of my massive hotel room, repacking my bags, checking the weight of each one, scrolling through photos, and trying to process it all. Outside, the rain came down in sheets. Some of the girls braved it to find a mall with an indoor amusement park. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to leave the safety of that quiet space.
I curled up under the hotel blankets and stared at the ceiling. I tried to sleep, but sleep never really came — maybe an hour or two at most. There was nothing left to do but wait for the morning, and the goodbye that was now hours, not days, away.
