In case you can't tell, they have naked ladies for their door handles. In order to open the door, it's hard not to grab indecent lady parts lol. But the price was really right, and the place is only 1 block away from my appartement... the location was really it's appeal. Luckily, my parents are the adventurous sorts and found the whole experience hilarious and good for a story.
After a leisurely breakfast at my place of fried eggs, fresh pineapple slices, and assorted pastries, we decided to take the subway to the Insadong neighborhood.
I am pointing to where we started, at Seoul National University. Ryan is pointing to Insadoing, where we are going. Dad isn't even pointing in the city of Seoul.
Insadong is the tradional arts and handicrafts area of Seoul. While we did get lost trying to find the shopping area, we found beautiful streets covered with large fall leaves.
It was almost like a little piece of Canada, but our leaves are nowhere near this huge. We were all completely charmed by the huge mapple leaves.
Finally, we found the shopping area. Insadong is the touristy neighborhood of Seoul, where you can best buy traditional Korean handicrafts. Lots of scroll paintings, art galleries, tea shops, clothing shops, and much more. We had a lovely time searching the tea shops for the perfect teacups, and looking through fabulous art galleries. We encountered some of the local sellers, who were so friendly.
Mandarin oranges are in season now, and they are sold everywhere. This street orange seller insisted that before we could take a picture, he needed to clean up his cart and tuck in his shirt all nice.
After a great time wandering around the shops, it was supper time. We went to a fairly new BBQ restaurant in a neighborhood close to my home, Guro. Korean bbq is really an experience worth having. BBQ here is by far my favorite korean food. I know i've posted about this before, but it's well worth repeating. It's all in the process.
You pick your meat, and then they bring you a big plate of your raw meat and turn on your grill. This one was a charcoal grill. You grill the meat to your desired level of crispiness.
Korean bbq is about more than just the meat, like all korean food it's also about all the side dishes that come with it. We had kimchi, dwenjongjiggae (ryan's favorite korean spicy tofu soup)an order of mushrooms to grill, cabbage salad, rice, seaweed soup, and raw onions in a sweet soy sauce. As for other accompaniment to the meat, we had lettuce, spicy chili sauce, and garlic. Washed it down with a large bottle of beer (really, they're huge here).
Going clockwise from the bowl of soup at the front, Dwenjongjiggae, Onions and sauce, seaweed soup, cabbage salad, lettuce, leftover sauce from onions, spicy chili sauce, garlic, Cass beer, more garlic, kimchi, and rice. We really had quite the full table.
Here's Ryan making his meat wrap. You start with a whole leaf of lettuce, then put rice (if you're me, but many don't). You then put spicy sauce and meat fresh off the grill. Top with garlic (grilled or raw is your choice) and then wrap like a tortilla.
After groaning from eating so much good food, we all went home to sleep it off. Said goodbye to Dad, as he had meetings the rest of the week. The next day I took mom to the school to have her meet my kids and see the school. After suitably impressed her, it was off to the airport for her flight back to Singapore. All in all, a great trip.
This is what i can promise any of you if you come visit lol. Meat, street sellers, fish, art, tea and chillaxing. A good vacation, if you ask me.
