Blogs we like

We started by going to the photo studio where we were going to have our pre-wedding photos taken.

Unlike weddings in Australia, couples in Korea typically go to a studio (although more frequently outside) and have professional portraits taken on a day before the actual wedding ceremony.  It’s big business, and the photos are a touch cheesy for western tastes.  We spent a lot of time prior to our trip trawling through over fifty wedding photography studio websites until we finally settled on one we liked, Studio Mecca.

After sorting a few things out, we were off downstairs to have be measures for our traditional Korean clothes, , or Hanbok.  We would wear these for both the studio photos and on the wedding day.  The measuring went well for me. Koreans generally seem a bit sturdier and taller than a lot of Asian races, so I was an easy fit.  My wife though is tall by any standard.  In the words of the seamstress, “This is the first time my tape measure wasn’t long enough!”.  All of the nicest female Hanbok fabrics come already joined.  Budget dictated something more modest than we would have liked, but eventually, we settled on something satisfactory, then moved on to explore Seoul.

From Hongdae (홍대), we headed to Gangnam, literally meaning ’south (of the) river’.  Gangnam is an area of expensive real estate, business and higher-end shopping.  When I say business, I don’t mean this kind of business:

Not in Gangnam

That’s for another post.  First, came lunch, which meant Kimbab.  ‘Kim’ (김)  means the particular variety of dried, roasted seaweed that the Korean version of sushi is wrapped in.  ‘Bab’ (밥) means rice, so it’s literally rice and seaweed.  Kimbab is generally anything but just those two ingredients, being pretty much a meal all in itself.  Vegetables, meat, fish and egg all find their way in, as does cheese and kimchi depending on your preferences.  It’s also really cheap, and I expect it will be one of the staples of my hike in a couple of months.  Complete, carbohydrate laden and portable.

One word of warning.  I did on one occasion at a truck-stop get given Kimbab that was literally just rice and seaweed.  This was a massive letdown, and I saw no way to prevent the error.

Just so you know – here’s what I look like when eating impostor kimbab:

Kimbab that wasn't really = sad face

Note the complete lack of any filling in them.  You will want to avoid this when you’re in Korea.

After finishing lunch, we set out to explore Gangnam.  I’ll save the details for the gallery at the end of the post.  As the sun went down, we slowly made our way toward a restaurant owned by one of my father in-law’s cousins, “Du-ori”.  If I’d been paying more attention to the name on the way in, I would’ve been less surprised.  As we sat down to a fantastic spread of side dishes, whole, roasted pumpkins came out to the table.  These were split open to reveal what we thought was delicious bacon.  It turned out, this was actually a kind of cured duck, something I’d not eaten before. And despite being kind-of family, we were unable to get the recipe.

Bacon-duck in a pumpkin - delicious!Side-dishes galore!

At any rate, it was really, really good, and hopefully I get to go back there on my next trip.  I highly recommend it for something different. It seems to be linked to on the Visit Korea website, but only in the Korean language part of the site.

Links and maps:

Studio Mecca:
Website: http://www.studiomecca.co.kr
Map (They’re on floor 2):

크게 보기

Du-ori:
Listing on Visit Korea (Korean language)
http://korean.visitkorea.or.kr/kor/ti/lodgig_food_shopping_traffic/area_food/list_920.jsp?category=&areaCode=&gotoPage=1&cid=132898&keyword=&stype=&ListType
On Daum: http://local.daum.net/place/place_view.daum?place_id=P38458 
Map:

크게 보기