For one of our last weekends living in Korea, we decided to finally go up to the Seoul Sky Observation Deck at the top of Lotte World Tower 롯데월드타워. This is a building we’ve seen every day for a year from our apartment window, and often visit to eat and shop there, but this was the first time we went all the way up. Lotte Tower is in the Jamsil area of Seoul – and at 554 meters it’s the tallest building in Korea (and 5th tallest in the world!). Some other record breaking achievements it boasts are: the world’s fastest elevator at 600 meters per minute, the world’s highest glass bottomed observation deck in a building, and the world’s highest swimming pool in a building (on the 85th floor).

It officially opened quite recently on April 2, 2017, and they celebrated with one of the most amazing fireworks displays I’ve ever seen:

Visiting on a weekend in Korea, we expected to have endless lines to wait in before heading up (going anywhere on a weekend here we always prepare to be treated like sardines). It was a relief to find it relatively uncrowded. Lucky!

We each paid our 27,000 won at the entrance, and went to wait for the elevator. With 123 floors, the elevator was ear poppingly fast, I was already feeling a little vertigo as it shot up to let us out on floor 118.

The view we came upon was incredible, I felt like a giant overlooking a toy city. It was awesome. We had fun trying to find our apartment and places we’d been. Also – for the fearless – there are the two glass observation decks where you can look straight down to the ground below as you walk across the transparent floor. As a kid I would probably never have gone up the tower in the first place, let alone look down through a glass floor. As a 4 or 5 year-old I cried my eyes out after being carried up into a lookout tower to see New York’s Finger Lakes…and that was not very high… and throughout my childhood I absolutely refused to climb up in any lighthouses we visited around the East Coast. I was just fine looking at it from the ground, thank-you-very-much. Suffice it to say, I’ve become a much braver person over the years. Though I swear it felt as if the floor was moving. My boyfriend assured me I was only crazy.

The observation floors also had a gift shop, café, and – randomly – Napoleon Bonaparte’s bicorn hat:

We ended our visit at the 123 Lounge, which is the actual highest point in the building. To get there – we took an elevator up, and the fee (which is not included in your ticket) was simply the price of a drink. To me it is a must-do. Why go to the highest building in Korea without really going all the way to the top?

Note about smog: although we visited in February, it was still a little hazy. This might be inevitable many days in Seoul because the air quality is sometimes abysmal. Smog levels in Korea are highest, and particularly terrible, during Spring- usually coming in around March.  Face masks are a common sight during this time, and outside areas are a lot less populated because it is better to stay indoors. If you’re planning to visit Seoul Sky, make sure the check the smog levels before paying for the ticket. It’d be disappointing to go up and not be able to see much.

That disclaimer aside, Seoul Sky is a really fun experience I would highly recommend to those visiting South Korea. You could spend an entire day in the area: shopping in the mall, catching a movie, walking around Seokchon Lake, or even heading into the Lotte World Amusement Park. I’m really going to miss seeing the Lotte Tower outside my window every day!