Seoul at Night

One night, Beth and I went up to the top of this tower:

and we looked around for awhile. I don't have a whole lot to say about these pictures. Just that Seoul is a freakishly large city. It wasn't even a very clear night, and we could see thousands and thousands of lights, as far as the eye could see. And that was just a small portion of the city. It still boggles my mind sometimes when I think about the size of Seoul.

We saw this view of the city as we were preparing to go up into the tower. 

We also saw signs directing us to the "shocking elevator and wall". It turns out, the shocking elevator and wall had movies projected onto them while you waited. 

This is from the top of the tower. 

There is a small post office in the tower. It is billed as the highest post office in Seoul, so you can send letters that are postmarked from there. 

Look! It's my neighborhood!

Hi Beth!

The massive black space is the mountain that the tower sits on. They build houses as far up the mountain as they can, as I can testify to every time I walk home...

There are so many bridges that cross the river, and major highways along each side. 

Hello Kitty Cafe

Beth and I met up with another friend named Sarah while we were exploring Hyehwa. I knew this really good cafe that I wanted to go hang out in while we were there, but when we arrived, it was all full. So we had to find someplace else to go. As we were walking around the street, we looked up and saw this. 

We decided that it was pretty high up on the list of things that Beth needed to experience in Korea, so off we went. 

It was SO pink inside. It was almost too pink, and this is coming from the girl who did her Sophomore dorm room in Disney princess...

There were adorable Hello Kitty cameos on the walls. 

The bathroom was appropriately pink as well. 

"It's nice to see my tiny friends again" These reminded me of care bears!

The chairs even looked like Hello Kitty, complete with button eyes. 

Of course, the drinks came with Hello Kitty foam art. 

We also ordered what seems to be a distinctly Korean coffee shop tradition. This is called "Yogurt Bread", and it is literally a massive slice of white sandwich bread, sliced into chunks, topped with frozen yogurt and strawberry sauce. You can get honey bread, chocolate bread, cheese garlic bread... This was my first time to actually try some though. It wasn't too bad. 

The coffee mugs were adorable. I really do like the little Hello Kitty cameo design. I love all things cameo. I may or may not have come home with one of these mugs :)

Story Run

I have a new favorite restaurant in Seoul. Well. I don't know if it's actually my favorite, but it's pretty awesome. Beth and I found it while we were in Hyehwa. It started when we were wandering around in the early afternoon, and we saw this. We thought that it was just a cool book painted on a random wall, until we read the subtitle. Chicken and Tomato? What kind of subtitle is that? It turns out, this was an advertisement for a restaurant on the other side of the wall. 

We walked around, had a look at the restaurant, and decided to keep wandering. We wandered and wandered, and finally got hungry. So we decided to try out this interesting looking chicken place. Only we couldn't find it again. We walked in what might have suspiciously looked like circles to someone who was less informed for nearly 30 minutes. We finally found the restaurant and decided that it had better be pretty awesome after all the trouble we went to trying to find it. 

We ordered our chicken and they brought this to us. It is mozzarella cheese, half a cherry tomato, half a basil leaf, two tiny dried peppers and a few sliced mushrooms. 

We were also asked to choose two kinds of sauce. We didn't really have any clue what was going on at this point, but we picked marinara and garlic, because those were the two sauce names I could understand from the list that was given to us :) It turns out that they are little fondue bowls that stayed nice and warm on these little candle holder things. 

There was a definite fairy tale theme going on throughout the restaurant. These were the dinner plates, complete with the White Rabbit. 

This was the chicken we ordered. It's homemade potato chips on the bottom and chicken strips on top. Believe it or not, this dish was called "Alice Healthy Chicken" on the menu. 

Beth is pretty excited about starting the meal!

Here's how it works. You get a piece of chicken on your fork. 

You thoughtfully consider which combination of dipping sauce and add-on (cheese, basil, etc) you want for your chicken. 

Then you enjoy. It was surprisingly delicious!

It seemed like each of the dishes had a different character on them. I guess this is Alice, but I don't know that for sure. 

She was just kinda hanging out on what could be a cloud or a wisp of smoke, or even a magic rug. 

There was even the Little Prince drawn on the door. All in all, it wasn't too expensive (less than $10 per person), it had charm and novelty, and the chicken was quite good. I highly recommend it, but I'm not sure I could give clear directions for how to get there. It's close to Hyehwa exit 4 though. Walk straight out of the exit, don't turn left. It isn't too far down that road.