So some of you will find this very odd, when I'm on vacation, I like to wake up early, early as in 6A - 6:30A; have breakfast, read the local and international newspaper if its available in English; if not, I'll burn my eyes with my Iphone. My wife hates that because I usually wake her up to have breakfast with me and her idea of vacation is sleeping in till 10A-11A.
Normally, when I'm going to work and I have to be in my shop at 9A......I don't get up till 8A and I have a minimum 30 minute drive.....hahahaha
So of course, I wake up around 6ish in the morning, the room is so small so even the slightest movement and using the washroom will wake someone up. So the Mrs. gets up and drags herself up to the 17/F hotel restaurant to have breakfast with me. After that ordeal, we get ready to eat our way thru Busan.
Of course, I forgot, just because I don't have to go work doesn't mean others don't, so when we were roaming the streets, not many restaurants were opened and the food stalls were definitely still closed. This was around 9:30ish. EPIC FAIL! So we continued walking around as the Mrs. wanted to walk off her breakfast in preparation for Lunch. At around 1030ish, the restaurants start opening and the streets started to fill with more people. One reason I do like this hotel is the LOCATION. We were steps away from Seomyeon Food Alley where the food stalls and many really delicious restaurants were.
We were warned, most restaurant staff and food stall operators do not speak english but we were ok with that. Whatever she saw, she would point, show quantity with fingers and then the person behind the food stall would show with fingers how much Won we owed them. As for restaurants, the Mrs would look at the posters and pictures on the exterior, if it looked good, we went in and just pointed at pictures on the menu. This worked very well! We learned a couple basic phrases in Korean and even though the restaurant staff could tell we were tourist from a mile away, the minute they heard us try to speak the butchered Korean we knew, they smiled, laughed and handed us a menu with pictures. All the staff were usually very friendly when we greeted them in butchered Korean.
The first restaurant we went in I forgot the name and don't have pictures of the exterior because the Mrs saw the pictures on their window and immediately dragged us in. Apparently she was starving even though it was only 2 hours after breakfast.
I did manage to snap a couple pictures of the menu and food before it was devoured.
Side dishes included kimchi, i think daikon, and miso soup with UNLIMITED REFILLS......As you can see, the Mrs. was ready to grab the utensils and start eating...I had to be quick whenever food showed up
we ordered some Korean style dumplings, beef bibimbap and a spicy chicken bibimbap. Everything tasted amazing!
After lunch, we walked around a little bit more so I could snap a few pics.....that was until the food stalls started to open....the smell guided the Mrs. towards them and I think you can guess what happened next. From lunch to me snapping a few pics and walking around Seomyeon to following the food stall scent and arriving in front of the food stalls...I would say it was only an hour after lunch. I was still stuffed from lunch but the Mrs. looks like she could devour the entire street. Whatever....guess I'll just follow her around with my camera and see where this goes.
I have a thing for small narrow alleys in Black & White, you guys will see what I mean as we go
We reached the food street! Unfortunately the Mrs. is still in denier won't let me post any pics of her racing around from stall to stall eating up the street......
So I picked up a Olympus E-M10ii before this trip, one of the features of this camera is the tilt screen which I thought was just for kicks until I was able to snap a bunch of pics with the camera off my waist and the tilt screen allowed me to see what I was pointing at. Most of the shop and stall owners never noticed I had a camera on me and just continued doing their thing. And I also lost the Mrs. in the mist of food stalls, people, moving carts, mopeds....yes mopeds in the middle of pedestrian areas are quite common in Korea. When I found her, I could tell she was very satisfied and very well fed.
Just a few pics of the street, I never actually ate anything as the Mrs. just dashed from end to end ordering, paying, eating and forgot I was trying to take pics of the food because by the time I caught up to her all she had in her hands was the garbage......
After the food alley, we walked around some more and checked out all the small local shops in the area. When the Mrs. got tired, we headed back to the hotel. There was a 24 hour convenient store on the G/F of the hotel, I grabbed some drinks and some instant noodles and went upstairs. Now you may ask, why on earth would I grab instant noodles when we are in Korea and there is so many food options. Well.....as soon as we got upstairs we were so tired that we just pasted out and when we woke up it was around midnight. Most restaurants in the area was closed and I wasn't comfortable taking a pregnant Mrs. into the bar area full of drunk peeps. So we ate instant noodles and I had a couple beers and called it a night.
Next Up - Eating thru Busan Day 2