Insadong

This past weekend (Saturday) Keith and I went to Insabong which is a neighborhood in Seoul that managed to go undestroyed throughout all of the wars this country has endured. It is a very old part of town and known for it's artistic nature, vegetarian restaurants, and traditional atmosphere. The streets are closed to cars on the weekends and street vendors are set up with various types of food, clothing, and jewelry. It was an amazing place! It's like the Oregon Country Fair and Diagon Alley combined! There were about 20 great ceramic stores at which Keith and I bought a set of beautiful tea mugs with cranes on them. Cranes represent a long life in Korean culture. These mugs have ceramic strainers that sit inside the cup (to be removed when drinking) and have lids that are used while the tea is infusing. Keith spotted an incredible Italian restaurant where we ended up eating an amazing lunch and I was able to purchase 2 glasses of Bourdeux. I had not realized how much I missed familiar food and wine. And this restaurant was not simply good because we hadn't had Italian in a while. It was genuinely good Italian with devine vegetarian options. Forks are provided for the pasta and getting reacquainted with these utensils was quite hilarious. It's amazing how one month of using chop sticks made us both become clumsy with forks despite the fact that we have used them for 25 years!

After leaving Insabong we headed to Yongsan. Yangsan is an electronics mecca with about a dozen buildings holding over 10,000 vendors all selling electronics. It was crazy! I was completely overwhelmed. Our purpose in going there was to buy a CD player, DVD player, and DVD burner at good prices. We managed to do this in about an hour and a half but it felt like much longer. I was happy to get back on the subway and head back to Ilsan.