Planning underway…

To start my planning, I ordered 2 books from Amazon which arrived just before Canada Day which was very nice because it gave me 4 days of the long weekend to pour over them. The books I ordered are:

  1. Lonely Planet Seoul
  2. Lonely Planet Korea

The Lonely Planet books I used on Tokyo worked really well so I thought I'd stay with them again. I have only really gone through the Seoul book and so far, it's OK. I wish there were more pictures and that they were a bit more opinionated in terms of what sights are better than others in their descriptions of the places. It's still very early though in my research and I will undoubtedly be supplementing the info from the book with stuff I get off the internet (which I have already done and what I did for my Tokyo trip also).

So far I've managed to select various sights for 4 or so of the neighbourhoods in Seoul and I've been plotting them on Google Earth. Did I mention that I am really meticulous when planning a trip? Maybe I will upload the Google Earth file to here if I can with all the bookmarks I've made of places I plan to visit.

In addition to all the palaces, temples and major attractions, I've located a couple of smaller places I plan to visit:

  1. 황금떡방 – translates to "Golden Rice Cake House" (Address:인천광역시 계양구 계산동 335-7전화번호, Tel# 032-556-8583).

    Using a combination of Google Maps, Earth and Naver (which is like the Korean version of Google), I managed to locate this deok store (Deok is a Korean rice cake dessert) that I want to visit. The young husband and wife owners of the deok store were profiled on this weekly Korean documentary show I watch called Screening Humanity (I don't know why Google Chrome detects Malware for this site when it's KBS). Their episode was titled "우리 이제 시작이야" which translate to "We are now starting" or "It's the beginning for us now". Both husband and wife both lost either one or both of their parents when they were really young. Despite the odds and hard upbringing however, they managed to start a family and a business making deok. I actually don't eat deok to be honest. I grew up in North America where chocolate and candy were plentiful so I don't find deok to be all that special. To Koreans though, deok was a treat that was usually only eaten on certain Korean holidays. Nowadays, Koreans eat it all the time because they can afford to and even though there are certainly tastier desserts now, deok still holds a special place in many Korean hearts. So despite not liking deok, I was really moved by their story and the hard work they showed in making it with their family and business so that's why I want to visit the store.

  2. 레드키친 – Red Kitchen (Address: 서울특별시 강남구 역삼동 697-8, Tel# 02-539-7012‎).

    This is a Ramen shop that is run my Nicole Jung's mom. Nicole Jung is a member of Kara, a popular k-pop band in Korea. I guess it's my love for K-pop that compels me to go! I'm really excited to eat ramen in Korea. I heard Red Kitchen serves all types including Cheese Ramen.

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