Seoul Food

...I couldn't resist.

The first thing we saw when we got through customs and out into Incheon Airport was a Baskin Robbins. The second thing was a scam artist posing as a taxi driver, and he saw us right away, too. The next time someone comes up to Nicole and I and demands to know where we're going, we're speaking French back to them.

In Korea every other word sounds like Japanese, but the syllables are all slurred and the writing is loopy. The TV is still weirdtacular, though. There are lights everywhere in Seoul, the bridges are illuminated, underlit, and across the river there is a stretch of buildings and rainbow pinpricks that just goes on and on. On the sidewalks there are people who don't walk in one direction or on one side and vendors who sell fried things, flowers, plastic toys that light up. It's like Tokyo except it's better because it's not Tokyo - there are busy streets with no crosswalks, no signals telling everybody when it is and is not acceptable to set foot on asphalt, in fact you can't not walk in the roads sometimes and it's wonderful to have to be aware of cars rather than beware of them - and it's like New York except I've never been to New York but I just get the feeling that that city is trying to reach me through this one.

We ate home-cooked kimchi soup and bibimbop at a mom&pop place just down the street from our very amazing guest house. Our host walked us there himself and told the proprietess what we wanted to eat. Her husband took pictures of me on his cell phone from across the room - that was refreshingly shameless, and it made me smile. She mimed to me that I shouldn't eat too much, because I'm wee and my stomach might hurt, but I finished most of a bowl the size of my head anyway because it was delicious.

Note: I admit that I wanted desperately the eat at the Outback Steakhouse or even the Papa Johns that we saw along the walk to the guest house, but Nicole, being the best friend that she is, talked me out of it. Still, if I get a hankering for pizza or black bean sauce, those two are fair game.

There is a small neighborhood market called "Lucky Sale Mart" a two-minute walk towards the station, and they have POMEGRANATES. Today after I see the palace and the historical district and the art galleries, I am coming back, buying a pomegranate, and eating the hell out of it!

Exploring time. Pictures will surely follow.