Sitting in Cafes

This morning we headed out to eat some breakfast at Isaac Toast, which is a chain of grilled sandwich places that’s open somewhat early. We thought we’d sit down and eat in the restaurant but the location we went to turned out to just be a stand in the side of a building. We ordered anyway, since it was fairly nice out and there was a single table to sit at, so I got the spicy donkaseu sandwich (2 kinds of breaded fried pork cutlet, an egg patty, American cheese, cabbage, mayo, and spicy sauce) and Meghan got the premium bacon sandwich (egg patty, one small slice of bacon, American cheese, cabbage, pickled radish slice, and honey mustard). For the record, she did not know all of that was on there... Not the greatest combo. Mine was good though!

After we finished our sandwiches we walked over to a coffee shop to get some drinks and write the previous day’s blog. We ended up getting a “honey toast” as well, which was a super thick piece of toast (like, 4 inches thick?) with a honey sauce and whipped cream on top, because we were still a little hungry. Super delicious!

Toast, a Strawberry smoothie thing, and a nitro cold brew coffee

We ended up spending an hour or so there just writing and chilling out. After that we went in search of dolls from one of Meghan’s favorite KDramas, Goblin, at a store that at one point sold them - the clerk informed us they were discontinued. I’m realizing we forgot to include the fact that we tried to go to their headquarters the day before and it either wasn’t there or was completely unmarked - a nice gentleman who I guess lives in the neighborhood asked us if we needed help finding something, and he did a search in Korean for it and didn’t see any information.

A confusing sign we found outside a hair salon... No tacos, but yes coffee?

After failing to find the dolls, we continued exploring the area around that store - it was a part of Hongdae we hadn’t explored yet. We knew there were supposed to be a ton of cafes and restaurants, so we figured we’d check it out. We ended up stopping at a little pasta place where we had DELICIOUS seafood pasta.

Focaccia with what tasted like real olive oil

Beautifully plated 

Clams!

Darn you, Arugula! Why do you have to be so bitter and gross? 

Cleaned it out!

We walked around a little bit more before we took a taxi over to go to a cupcake shop we had heard was really amazing. We ordered an Earl Grey cupcake, a salted caramel cupcake, and a lemon cupcake. They were very light and airy, but it kind of felt like they used oil to make the frosting so light which took them down a notch in enjoyment - delicious but kind of weird feeling after.

She went to Le Cordon Bleu 

After a bit more exploring around we ended up sitting in another cafe, drinking a milkshake and putzing around on our phones. I tried to make a plan for dinner but couldn’t really figure out where to go from checking things out online, so we decided to wing it.

We decided to go explore Garosugil again and took the train down. We arrived at a Hyundai department store so we decided to check it out first - did you guys know that Fendi and Burberry had children’s lines? Because that’s what kind of department store this was - full of all the luxury brands all the way through. It felt very much like it was trying to be a Japanese department store, which seemed kind of weird, like why not develop your own style? They even had a large number of Japanese-made food products in their food section. I got a Nespresso sample at the Nespresso booth (because why not), and it was some pretty delicious and fast espresso. We found out that Nespresso offers recycling of their pods, which is pretty awesome - I might look into getting a machine at some point. We went up to the roof to see the garden they had and were kind of surprised that there was no view at all of the city and that they had what we assumed were “Don’t walk on the grass” signs - are they really not making enough money to resod the roof every few months?

Totally surrounded by walls

Expensive looking birch trees

Realizing we did not have thousands of dollars lying around to spend at this department store, we head off for Garosugil and it’s neighbor streets. We saw some YG (another of the big three record labels) bear statues at the Gangnam tourism office.

Signed by all the members

We stopped into a few clothing and jewelry stores, and found a place that was an art installation that also had just 3 products to sell scattered around in it.

The plants shifted around 

McDonald’s delivery scooter and helmet 

Fancy plastic surgery center 

After we finished walking through all the shops we headed over to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a big landmark building designed by a British Iraqi architect to have almost entirely no 90 degree angles. They showcase artfully designed products, have a designer workspace, host art exhibits (there’s a Wallace and Grommit exhibit here now), lots of interesting stuff. We didn’t really plan enough time to take it all in, and the week’s worth of walking was taking it’s toll, so we didn’t get to explore all of it. We left to try and find some food before we couldn’t walk any more.

Dongdaemun gate - way down the street from the DDP

These cups were just mirrored - the pictures on the saucers were distored in a way that their reflections looked right on the cups 

I don’t know...

The cross bar is not totally see through... 

It’s mirrored so that it looks like the red part is visible

We ended up finding another department store that had a food court with sit down restaurants in it that seemed pretty good. We chose the Chinese restaurant because I had been wanting to get some Korean Chinese food while we were here. There was a mixup in the ordering and they brought out sweet and sour pork instead of fried dumplings - they decided to just give us that dish free despite it being part of all of their set courses that people can order, so free food! Most of the stuff we ordered was only so so, including the bean noodles that are kind of the signature dish, which was disappointing.

Bunny statues outside the department store

After dinner we walked back to DDP to wait for nightfall so we could check out the LED Rose Garden they have there. We saw some Chinese religious dissidents starting some exercises and displaying a bunch of signboards with information about how they were persecuted in their own country, and we were going to watch them, but they only did one movement in the 5 minutes or so we were waiting, so we moved on.

First pose.....

Not moving.

I ran and got some fresh fruit juice at a shop nearby while Meghan staked out a table for us to wait at, and then a little while later it was dark enough to take some pictures. I spent a while trying to capture some good ones with the camera and the gorilla pod (it’s a flexible tripod thingy), and I think I mostly succeeded. We hung around for a few more minutes just enjoying the views and the night air, before heading back home.

Juice (orange, and orange-pineapple - that was the winner)

Not quite dark enough...