Day 2 - Exploring Myeongdong

Stephen and I got up at the crack of dawn around... 3:30 PM. A long flight to Korea coupled with a long night of drinking does that. After recounting our night-time festivities and wondering if we'd be able to top it with the long week ahead of us, we ventured through the Myeongdong shopping district:



We got a little hungry and thirsty, and having traveled hundreds of miles to get here, we had to do something special... like getting sandwiches at 7-11 and eating them on a sidewalk like bums from America. The sandwiches are actually pretty good and eating on the sidewalk was pretty funny:





Sated and quenched we headed over to the department store across the street from our hotel where Stephen picked up a snazzy jacket:



We planned on doing some more exploring and Stephen wanted to drop off his jacket at the hotel, but not before we picked up some soju and Hite Stout. 7-11 ftw! When we got to the room, it was about time for my cousin Yunhee to meet up with us so we ended up not going back out and just chilled in our room. A long flight to Korea coupled with a long night of drinking does that. When she arrived, it was close to dinner time and she had invited a friend that wanted to meet us so we just chilled some more. When her friend arrived, it was off to dinner at a ddeok jjim restaurant:



Yunhee's friend Bo-rahm was really cool to meet (nice to meet or mahn-nah-suh-bahn-gah-wah-yo). She's an accomplished pianist working as a piano tutor, learning to play organ, and serves as the pianist at her church. Hot. She also joined me in clowning on Yunhee which is always fun. After dinner we all went over to Cheonggyecheon, a creek flowing through Seoul that was at one point nearly dried up from years of development and neglect, but was restored in 2003-2005. It's really nice:



We met up with Ki-Young there and since it was cold we grabbed some Starbucks. Afterwards Bo-rahm had to leave because she had church in the morning so we went to drink in Hongdae because we didn't. Wine out of a bamboo stalk:



Yunhee was getting tired so we decided to have another boys night out. This was an adventure in itself because Stephen was out of cash and we were running around Seoul and taking taxis in the middle of the night looking for a Global (or as I like to say mockingly say 'grober') ATM. We finally found at a Citibank and proceeded to be bad. Again.

We got home before dawn this time, but cut it pretty close.