With the primary mission of finding breakfast we headed into the Lotte Department Store. Why does one head into a department store for breakfast you might ask? Well because the bottom floor of Asian (I say this based on my experience in Tokyo alone) department stores (which but anything you've ever seen in the US to shame) is always a wild food court of sorts selling the most interesting and ornate snacks of indecipherable ingredients. After wandering the top eight floors of the store we made it to the basement food court as expected.
While there was certainly a wide array of food options, few to none were recognizable! We were kindly offered a sample of delectable fruit jelly that was essentially a fresh made jello put back into the rind of the fruit; Nate's being an orange, mine a grapefruit. Not sure what food was for immediate consumption, was was to bring home, and what still needed to be cooked, we spent a great deal of time just walking in circles around the basement admiring the immaculate displays.
For my main course I settled on what looked like a friend sushi roll for 2,000 won. Nate chose a hot dog baked into a French looking pastry that he used a pair of golden tongs to retrieve and place on his gold plated platter to bring to the cash register! Feel less than satisfied but at least putting something in our stomachs we headed back out to street to find another bite to eat!
Not able to wait much longer we plopped down at a restaurant just outside the department store. Unable to read the small menu, a waiter with a handful of English words helped us choose a beef rib soup and a cold noodle dish. Both were rather tasty an
d once again accompanied by an array of side dishes. Perhaps the best part of the meal was watching Nate struggle with chopsticks as his noodles continued to evade his mouth! I'm sure he'll figure it out soon, for if not. . .he will certainly be one hungry traveler!!
d once again accompanied by an array of side dishes. Perhaps the best part of the meal was watching Nate struggle with chopsticks as his noodles continued to evade his mouth! I'm sure he'll figure it out soon, for if not. . .he will certainly be one hungry traveler!!Down in the ticketing area of the metro we stopped to check out the city map and see if Lonely Planet: Seoul offered any interesting day trips near by. We settled on the walking tour around City Hall and were about to head out until approached by a metro employee asking if we needed help getting tickets. We confessed that we in fact were new arrivals and needed help deciding where to go more so than getting a ticket!
Speaking broken but very understandable English he suggested that City Hall offers little to see other than just wandering around the outside of it and perhaps we should go where there are 'many people.' This sounded like a great idea so he pointed us in the direction of the COEX Mall in Jamsil. Having to travel only two stops with a transfer in the middle made it a much shorter trip than the one to CH would have been anyways!
Our metro employee friend helped us buy a ticket, or did so for us, and sent us on our way, making sure we went down to the correct train. We arrived in a mass of people at the Samseong station off of Metro Line 2. Following the signs we made it to the COEX Mall which is almost impossible to describe. There must have been a quarter of a million people in this single complex which had easily hundreds of stores, everything from electronics to fashion to books to restaurants and in between.
Fascinated by the crowds and easily entertained by window shopping we spent the next few hours just wandering COEX. One of our more notable stops was in a bustling arcade that was literally filled to the brim with people of all ages. Now arcades are fun but arcades that draw crowds because the players are so incredible are really fun! For example, we watched a kid play drums on Rock Band, along with a dozen or so other observers, who somehow managed to bang out streaks of 100+ perfect notes that flew by literally faster than I could register what was showing up on the screen! One 'game' that we certainly do not have back at home are personal Karaoke booths in which you can even record your performance straight onto a cassette tape!
After wandering the mall for hours it was time to grab dinner so we headed towards the food court, stopping to see if any of the menus posted outside other restaurants were decipherable. Ironically we stopped at one of the few restaurants that had not a word of English displayed as we walked by and notice that they were showing the gold medal men's basketball game live! We sat ourselves and were prompted to order by pointing to one of the half dozen pictures plastered around on the wall. I settled for an udon type soup while Nate tried the bibimbap that we had been looking so hard for during the past few days.
Managed to drag the meal out to an hour or so making sure that we stayed until the end of the game, which of course the U.S. won!! From there we had little to do but drag ourselves back to our apartments and crash for the night, after hotly discussing George Washington's brilliance and unobtainable status as a human being.
The only issue with being in bed by 10 or so is that today, our first day of work, we are expected to be teaching from 4:00pm until 10:00pm. No clue how that's going to work as we were both almost asleep by eight last night! It'll be tough but isn't any first day of work!?!
Let you know how it goes either tonight or tomorrow, depending on if I make it through!
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