It was the rain that originally washed (haha) my Saturday plans away. Originally a friend and I were going to go to the open air market in Hongdae but apparently if it rains, no one shows up...not even to wait out the rain. After going home, I got a message that my friend was still in the area so I trekked back into Hongdae to meet her. From there, the afternoon/early evening was filled with an unplanned but fun adventure!
[Hongdae - take two]
My friend wanted to visit the cafe where Coffee Prince was filmed so we headed there first. It currently functions as a working cafe but for some reason today they were not open to the public. They said we could take pictures outside but not of the inside...weird.
Pretty good Engrish right?
The next stop for us was a very famous bingsu place. This place was so well known there was a line out the door! We probably waited for...20-30 minutes? I'm not exactly sure but the longer we waited in the heat, the more I wanted any bingsu...famous or not. The menu was simple from what I understood, you could get the classic milk bingsu or the one with green tea. We opted for the classic...it was quite tasty and refreshing.
[Insadong]
After bingsu, we headed to Insadong because I still hadn't bought any souvenirs for my co-workers. I decided to get the mother-of-pearl inlay business card holders. These are sold many places but I wanted to scout out a good place to try and haggle with the vendor. I'm sure most of these vendors buy from the same source and it's just a matter of finding a vendor that is willing to haggle a bit (regardless of if there is a price sticker on the merchandise). Now you can't haggle everywhere in Korea, but Insadong is ok with it. It helps if you are 1) paying in cash and 2) buying in bulk...I was doing both that day. Oh...and also, if you speak some Korean. In actuality, you don't need all that much vocabulary.
After finding a place that had a variety of the business card holders, my friend said we wanted to buy 15 of them and asked if we could get some kind of break. The vendor gave us a number, then we countered and she agreed...easy enough! The hardest part was picking out 15 different ones. Luckily, the vendor had some extra stock that wasn't on display.
Souvenirs in hand, we made our way out of Insadong to Samcheongdong.
[Samcheongdong]
Samcheongdong is known for its cafes and shops. Dynasty era palaces flank its left and right with Insadong to its south. It's a very nice area and was bustling with activity when we arrived. It was also terribly hot and humid so we found a small tea cafe to take a break.
It was getting late and hunger started to settle in. We decided to go for cuisine other than Korean and found an Italian restaurant just down from the tea cafe. After browsing the menu, we agreed to stay and have dinner. And for some odd reason, Koreans love to give pickled items as side dishes with Italian food (this includes pizza places).
Overall, a good day spent...all improvised at that! I only had one more day left in the motherland...how quickly these 5 weeks flew by...
~
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