Friday fun.

Chris finished his 5 day work related training in Seoul last friday. On his last day, he asked me to meet him there. Like any obedient girlfriend, I said yes and waited for him but there was a sudden last minute meeting that he had to attend to and he was an hour late. For the whole hour, I decided to spend it walking around the neighborhood till I came across Deoksugung palace nearby. The fee is 1,000 won and the place wasn't all that bad.. I enjoyed checking the place out and taking some pictures. Here's what I saw...







Overall the palace tour was actually fun, except for 2 unpleasant (minor and extremely petty) things I experienced. Before I went to the palace, I dropped by Holly's Cafe and got a tall cup of coffee. It's really nice having something warm to drink while leisurely strolling someplace right? However, they don't allow food nor drink at the entrance. Other palaces didn't exactly have this rule.. Instead of throwing away the cup of coffee, I decided to drink it as fast as I could.. mind you, it's really hot and it left me with a scalded tongue. I was a bit disappointed when I saw several vendo machines that sells beverages and coffee inside.. The other thing was at the restroom.. There were a lot of Chinese tourists and the restroom was packed. While I was freshening up in front of the mirror, a middle aged Chinese woman accidentally poured soda on my skirt while hurrying to get some tissue. It's winter and soda was cold so I let out a mild scream. I didn't get an apology or a 'sorry-look' from the woman. Nothing at all.. I was totally ignored.. She left as if nothing happened while I was helplessly cleaning my skirt with a bunch of wet tissues... pissed, but I didn't say a thing although my gut tells me to demand an apology from her. With a scalded tongue and a wet skirt, I went to our meeting place and met Chris.. We then went to Jongro area and passed by Cheonggyecheon.



For dinner, we went to a well-being samgyeopsal restaurant near the area. The restaurant had at least 20 people waiting in line for a table so it must be popular. We had to wait for 35 minutes before we could actually get a table. I know I made a promise to stay away from soju but on that night, I had a couple of shots. I was extra careful not to get drunk so I filled my stomach with a lot of side-dishes and meat in between. One good thing, it was cold that night (extra cold since I'm wearing a mini-skirt) and soju warmed me up a bit. I was able to get a picture of our dish but it wasn't clear enough so I was thinking twice before posting it here...



The food was interesting.. Instead of sangchu, thin strips of ddeok was used to wrap the meat. It was my first to see this... There are also a couple of sauces and powder like seasoning that you put together with the usual garlic and ssamjang. I still prefer the old fashion way of using korean wrapping lettuce for samgyeopsal.

After eating, we went to a music bar and had a bottle of western beer each. The place was nice, they played songs which I like... It was almost midnight when Chris and I decided to go home.