화이팅 hwaiting andy

Mainly tailored for tourist consumption, you can find K-drama themed confectionery at department stores in Seoul like Lotte and Shinsegae down in their food sections.  I picked up this box of Boys Over Flowers chocolates (though I haven't even seen the drama) at the Shinsegae boutique at the airport when leaving Korea to see what they were like.  They had ones for other dramas such as Jewel in the Palace and Winter Sonata as well. I finally got around to opening the box!  As it was just before the due date you can see the chocolates started to bloom (when they turn white...don't worry though, there's nothing wrong with them and they are just as edible).  While the boxes are K-drama themed, the actual chocolates on the other hand are very generic. If you're looking for some nice chocolate, I would pass on these but if you're a hardcore fan or looking for a neat gift for that K-drama crazy friend of yours, then this is probably for you!

When I came back home from the National Museum of Korea and told my aunt about the lunch fiasco, she wanted to call the place up and give them an ear full.  Hahaha, don’t mess with my maknae aunt!^^  I told her it was OK and to forget about it.  It was getting close to dinner time and I had been putting off having McDonald’s for 17 days now and coupled with the mediocre lunch today, it seemed like the right time to spring for it.  There were opportunities to try McDonald’s earlier in my trip as I had passed the one in Jongno a couple of times and actually entered one to have an ice cream but I always put it off for something more local instead.  At home, I also tried to refrain from suggesting McDonald’s out of consideration for my aunts.  While they would have it, it’s not like they like fast food and McDonald’s in particular as I do.  They would probably be more content with eating a bowl of rice and some kimchi because that’s what they grew up on....

When I first visited Korea many, many years ago, I as well as my mom had good memories of eating 냉면 (Naeng myeon, a cold noodle dish) at a restaurant located at the top of the Lotte Department Store. As you recall, restaurants usually occupy the top floors of department stores in Korea. Naeng myeun is probably one of the few Korean dishes that I actually really like. It uses buckwheat noodles and comes in a bowl of chill beef broth. In addition to the noodles there’s usually very thinly sliced pickled radish, beef, cucumbers, Asian pear, watermelon and an egg. I usually have it at home with only cucumbers and sometimes Asian pear. I eat it most often and almost exclusively during the summer since it’s a cold dish and it’s super refreshing to consume on a hot day. Naeng Myeon is so refreshing that Jessica from Girls’ Generation and Comedian Park Myung Soo sang a awesome duet about it. Watch it, it’s funny.^^ Having good Naeng myeon is all in the soup and it usually comes with...

One of my older aunt’s who resides in a city south of Seoul had been staying with us for the last several days and today her daughter and granddaughter (so my cousin and niece) came to visit us and to take my aunt back home. When I came back to my aunt’s place from World Cup Stadium, they had already arrived and were waiting for my return. It was nice to meet my cousin and to find out that I actually have a niece. Aside from immediate family, I have no relatives at all in Toronto or Canada so the idea that I have relatives let alone a cousin or niece was a little surreal. You would think that I would connect more with my cousin but since there was an age gap (she was older than I was), I actually spent all the time talking with my niece as she seemed closer to my age than my cousin. My niece was very cute and while she could probably speak a little English, she seemed shy to do so so we conversed in Korean. She was studying horticulture at University and had tests coming up in the ne...

I can’t believe I am at the half way point of writing about my trip. T.T . When I finish I will be sad to close this chapter but also happy to see what the future will have in store. I still have 10 days left to write about but with the frequency in which I’ve been posting lately, I’ll probably be on my next trip before I finish! Dah. I didn’t feel like doing too much on this day that involved a lot of travelling between large distances so I decided to head to Dongdaemun to check out the department stores and markets that were located in the area. I didn’t take many pictures on this day and that’s usually an indication that nothing really caught my interest or I was doing something, like shopping, that didn’t call for pictures to be taken. On this day, I think it was a bit of both. I arrived in the Dongdaemun area by getting off the subway at Dongdaemun History Station. If you are looking for soccer jerseys, there is an underground shopping alley connected to the station lined wit...

Today was Saturday and there were a couple of events going on that I wanted to check out which determined my schedule for the day. The first was the Free Market in Hongdae that happens every Saturday and the other was a fireworks show along the Hangang River. While I always had plans from the beginning to check out the Free Market, I was never all that serious about visiting The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince Cafe where they filmed the MBC Drama of the same name, though I always had thoughts to. I watched the drama during its run on MBC and found it very enjoyable and thought they used really great music throughout the drama. It had been several years however since it aired so my enthusiasm wasn’t the same now as it was then. I found a renewed vigor to visit the place however after researching and finding that it was located in the near vicinity of the Free Market which I was going to visit anyways. By reading various blogs and using Google and Daum Maps, I wrote down instructions on ho...

Today I decided to visit the sights in and around Insadong. I would usually decide which of the many itineraries I wanted to go on the night before and somewhat the next morning. I deliberately started with the closer proximity itineraries first so that I could get accustomed to Seoul so that way I would be more familiar with my way around the city and riding the metro when I needed to travel farther away. Insadong is actually located not too far down stream from the start of the Cheonggyecheon so you could hit both places in one visit if you wanted to. One of the places I planned to visit was a café in Insadong. As I mentioned before, while watching an episode of MBC’s We Got Married , one of the early episodes starring the YongSeo Couple ( Jung Yong Hwa of CN Blue and Seohyun of Girls’ Generation) took place in a café where they had a traditional boxed lunch and some tea. While watching the episode, the place looked really cute and I thought it would be neat to visit. I kind of sa...

I walked North along the West side of Jongmyo to get to Changdeokgung and came across some outdoor exercise machines. While travelling through Seoul, I found many places, mostly in parks but sometimes along paths like this one, where outdoor exercise machines were installed for people to use. I saw a number of different exercise machines throughout and most of them were of low-impact designed more to loosen or warm up the body. The ones I saw here included a sit-up bench, a suspended walker and a bench-press like machine that used your own weight as the counter weight. When you grabbed the bars and pushed forward, the seat would move up in the proportional amount. I continued North until I finally got to the entrance of the Royal Palace of Changdeokgung (or Changdeok Palace). When it came to ranking sites, my Lonely Planet Seoul City Guide book ranked Gyeongbokgung ahead of Changdeokgung. So before I even got here, I felt like this palace was somehow not going to be ...