We woke late in our soft, soft hotel beds to another beautiful day in Seoul. After a breakfast of pastries and coffee at Paris Baguette (not the best coffee I've had by a long shot), we walked into Myeongdong crossing over the Cheonggyecheon stream as we went.
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| Cheonggyecheon Stream |
After about 30 minutes of walking, we reached the Namsan Cable Car, with plans to ascend the hill to Seoul Tower. We were soon on board, and Seoul dropped away beneath us. The cable car deposited us near the base of Seoul Tower, surrounded by snow covered cliffs. As we walked from the cable car base station to the tower, we were surrounded by thousands of locks of every shape and size - added by lovers as a token of their affection. They were attached to every available hanging location - fences, trees, sign-posts, security cameras. The more amorous young tykes had chosen locations that were either dangerous or prohibited. Ah young love.
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| Namsan Cable Car - a real leg saver. |
Arriving at the tower we ascended in a lift that included a video in the ceiling of us shooting into outer space. Once up on the 5th floor of the tower we had the whole of Seoul laid out before us - it was a fantastic view, although my vertigo didn't enjoy it to begin with!
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| The views from Seoul Tower are spectacular! |
Soon we tired of all the spectacularness of the view and started to think about lunch. What we really wanted to try was the dumplings at Myeongdong Koja, a place recommended by Donncha & Maya, so we walked back into Myeongdong and grabbed a table. This Michelin star restaurant has only 3 dishes on the menu, and we ordered the dumplings and the noodle soup. Both were fucking amazing! We have had so many spectacular meals this trip - this has been the rule rather than the exception, and this meal was no different.
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| Myeongdong Koja - small menu, big flavour! |
After lunch, Katrina and Claudia went shopping in Myeongdong for skincare products. Eben and I just wandered the streets of Myeongdong like vagrants. After a few streets we found 30cm soft-serve and just had to give it a try (despite the single-digit temperature). It was pretty good, but wasn't quite as soft as I expected. Maybe it was the cold temperature? Not sure. Didn't stop me from eating it though 😅.
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| Walking the afternoon streets of Myeongdong |
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| Totally non-phallic soft serve in Myeongdong. |
Soon we tired of the crowds and started back for Insadong. On the outskirts of Myeongdong, we came across a tiny street cafe "Mooney Moon Coffee" run by a chill old dude. I was still laughing at the name when I detected the smell of roasting coffee. Dude had a roaster running out front of his little stall! Of course Eben and I went over and I asked him about his operation. He spoke great english and we talked about his roasting process for a while. Once the batch was done and he'd cooled it down, he made the two of us a drip filter coffee and it wasn't half bad with a splash of milk.
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| Mooney Moon Coffee - Roaster and Drip Filter Master. |
Back in our hotel we chilled for a couple of hours until it was time to walk back into Myeongdong to see the Cookin' Nanta show. The show's log-line: "A talented troupe of Korean performers treats the Cookin' audience to a taste of Culinary lunacy-sliced and diced to percussive perfection." promises hilarity, and the show delivers - it was a hoot combining musical numbers based around hitting cooking utensils together, with various cooking related gags. It was a bundle of fun and we laughed ourselves stoopid.
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| Cookin' Nanta Show was a riot. |
After the show we sampled a little of Myeongdong's famously overpriced street food, with some gimbap and hottteok going down very nicely indeed. To be honest we were all still full from gorging ourselves at lunch, so with just a few snacks we walked back to Insadong and climbed into bed.
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