A day of touristy things - Erin

I last left off with South American music in an Indian restaurant. The next day was even more eventful. My friend Rob from Weyburn and his little sister, Kristen, were in Seoul for her last weekend before she flew back to Saskatchewan. Anyhow, I had not seen Rob (or Kat) in ages and was looking forward to sightseeing with them.

Rob called around 10 AM and asked what we wanted to do. Anyone who knows me well knows I am incapable of making decisions. It was actually not that difficult and we decided to hit up Namsol Hanok Village. We had seen it from N Seoul Tower and were wanting to know what it was. Rob and Kristen were staying close by so we called when we were on the train and met them in the subway station. I think it took us about 50 minutes to get there. Not too bad, I think.

So we followed the directions in the Lonely Planet guide, and discovered not only was it right around the corner, but it was free. I still have trouble understanding this. I enter places slowly so they can catch me if I am supposed to pay. Oh, well, it is not such a bad thing to get used to. We took an English map brochure and headed in.

It was okay. I am not so sure I would go back again, but it was interesting enough. The grounds were a beautiful place to walk around, but it appeared to be just a bunch of buildings. There was a festival for Independence Day going on so there were a million children running around. We all know I am not a fan of children I do not know, so I was not to keen on that. There was an art gallery there with really cool art, and a beautiful pond with Koi and pigeons around it. That was a nice place to sit. I can see it being a great place to go if you are looking for that sort of thing, but I think I would prefer it not on a National Holiday. That being said, there was a place there where you can make and hand paint an old school lantern, and I so want to do that.

After an hour or so we decided to head to Yongsan. Rob had never been there yet and we thought it was the kind of place that everyone needs to see at some point. We headed there on the Subway and showed them the gist of it. It is not a place one can spend a lot of time if you are not planning to spend mad cash, so we did a brief tour and headed out.

I had done some reading (Lonely Planet again, of course) and discovered that the Noryangin Fish Market, a famous place in Korea is one stop over. Jeffry and I had been dying to go here, and Rob said they didn't get a chance to go to the fish market in Japan, so it would be a good idea. We got back on the train and headed there.

Once we got off the train, in what I will call the most confusing train station ever, we discovered we had no idea where to go. I mean I had an inkling, but no real directions. I knew it was down, but when presented with many directions, we were not sure. A nice Korean man who spoke English could see that we had not idea and asked us if we needed help. I love that about Korea. We did in fact need his help and we pointed in the right direction.

We headed over a elevated walkway and could immediately smell that we were going in the right direction. At the end of the walkway and in a parking lot, there was a man selling knives and whetstones. It was like destiny. Jeffry had to leave his behind with our kitchen things when we left, since it weighed a million pounds. It is a nice, brand new one and it will get years of use when he is a chef, but we desperately needed one here. We were looking online for one and he was only interested in Henkels or Global if he could not see it in person to know it wouldn't mess up his tools. Anyhow, this old man had a zillion ones to choose from and after much looking and him telling us "much nicer" we paid 15000 won and away we went with a way to hone our blades.

While Jeffry and I were gazing longingly at sushi knives, Rob and Kristen found a spider. I think SPIDER would do it more justice. I refused to look at it, so I have only (by accident) seen it in pictures, but apparently is was gigantic. Like huge. Anyhow, after spider watching we headed in.

What was down those stairs was heaven. Jeffry and I love markets, and we love big ones. This was HUGE. And all seafood and fish, live and recently passed. There were a zillion kinds of fish products there. From fresh, still alive shellfish to octopus and anything else you could imagine. The prices were crazy cheap, especially compared to back home. We admired the ugliness of the abalone, which I have no desire to try, despite Anthony Bourdain's insistence on No Reservations that it is one of the most delicious things. We thought they were endangered, so we want to do some reading before buying them. Their appearance en masse at the market means nothing to me, as we all know people will fish things until they are gone.

Anyhow, we were agog. It was beautiful. We saw giant octopus' that were probably taller than me stuffed into crates for easy transport. There were Big Eye Tuna asking to be put in my belly. There were the freshet squid I have ever seen that were not swimming in a tank outside of a restaurant. Eels, regular and diver scallops, mussels, clams, snails, shrimp, langostines, crabs of every size and type and many kinds of fish. I think I saw Black Sea Bass, and was hoping to heck it was not the Chilean, going extinct variety. And there was sushi.

We walked past one fish monger who kept saying sashimi, sashimi to us. I understood it to mean that if you bought one of these swimming fish you can take it home and make sashimi from it. I thought that was interesting, but since neither Jeffry or I have any sushi knowledge beyond eating it, it was of no interest to me. Then I figured it out. He killed the fish and cut it into sashimi for you right there. Crazy talk. Now that is fresh. We are going to try this one of these days. I HAVE to. I have never seen such fresh raw fish in all my life and I just know it is amazing. Next time. There will definitely be more trips here.

After an hour or so of wandering through the endless aisles of fish we decided to buy some shrimp (which Jeffry let go bad, again). We got about 40 giant ones for 10000 won. Back home they would have been not only frozen, but 3x more expensive. We are going to take as much advantage of this as we afford while we are here. How could we not?

So after we left we headed back to the subway to head back to our place. We figured that if we went home for a couple hours and took the dogs out and fed them we would be good to go for an evening of drinks and fun in Hongdae. After waiting for the train for 30 minutes and riding for about the same amount of time, we discovered that we were on some sort of express train that went right past our stop. We ended up in Suwon, and decided to catch a taxi back to our place, since we are all so tired of the train at this point. It was a nice drive and we made it home in one piece.

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