Seoul - Irish Festival, Insadong, and Costco

Today, since it is Saturday, we decided to take a trip to Seoul, since it's not too far.

First, we took the local bus to the Anseong Bus Terminal to buy our tickets to Seoul. We were having a little trouble deciding between the different buses but this Australian man with his son and son's friend helped us get on the right bus and helped us out a little, for which we were grateful.

The bus ride to Seoul from Anseong took about an hour, not too long. When we got there, we caught the Subway, which was pretty crowded but not too bad. It was actually pretty smooth, unlike the buses here, which jerk and move so much that it's hard to keep balanced if you're standing.

So first we went to this Irish Festival thing at Marconnier Park. It just started so there wasn't too much yet - there was a face painting place, a beer booth, and a stew booth. They had some shows too, we saw some Korean drummers and dancers. The free beef stew was pretty good as well, especially since it was pretty chilly (for our Texan bodies).

free soup!

We didn't stay long since we wanted to do some other things, so we high-tailed it out of there and headed towards Insadong. Insadong is this street that has lots of little art places, teashops, lots of little souvenir shops and stands, and food stands and stalls as well. It was pretty nice just walking down the street, which was filled with color from all the little pieces of art and knick knacks that are just lying around, hanging around, or displayed in their own little ways. We did have some snacks, first we had a hot cake filled with honey. It was pretty good. Aaron accidentally spilled some of it on his sleeve because it just oozed out. We also had this hot dog thing, which was wrapped in fish cakes and seaweed. For lunch, we went to this little restaurant and we had some dumplings and beef soup, which was delicious as well. Of course it came with three types of kimchi and seaweed.

yummy beef soup!

delicious dumplings!

Mickey's twin brother, "Mickel"?

hot dog wrapped in fish cakes and seaweed, topped with ketchup, mustard, and something white?

fluffy!

hot cake filled with honey!

hot cake stand

After Insadong we decided to go the Korean Costco, and boy, what an adventure it was. So we got off the right subway station, and then we realized we had to take a bus to get to Costco. So we jammed pack into a bus (literally, we had like no room to breathe) on a busy stopngo traffic. When we finally got there, the Costco was pretty big, but there was lots and lots of people WITH THEIR CARTS, so it was nearly impossible to move around at all. We could just walk around a little without our cart but with it, you could barely move to navigate anywhere. We did manage to a buy a few things to fit into Aaron's backpack and another bag, as well as holding a few boxes. We ended up spending 155,000 won, which is about $104, on bread, cheese, deli ham, canned beef, canned clams, canned anchovies, canned shredded beef, instant oatmeal, these cracker stick things, and walnuts. Not too bad.




So then we headed back towards the bus station in Seoul to catch the bus to Anseong. From costco, first we had to get back on that superjammedpack bus to the subway station, take the Subway to the bus terminal, and then take that bus to Anseong, and then another local bus to our area, and then a 5 min walk in the cold and dark to our apartment. Whew! We kept on getting lost in the bus terminal/subway station/shopping mall place, but eventually we found it and went on our merry way. And so that was our long day in Seoul.



In other news, on Wednesday both Aaron and I went to get our ARC card, but of course they say it'll take a week or two so we are just waiting for our cards so we can have a bank account and all that good stuff.


Also, I uploaded more pictures here, so if anyone is curious, go check it out.