We got up somewhat early on Saturday and made our way into the city. We went to Itaewon (the foreigners district) again, because I found a Greek restaurant where I could actually get Hummus. It was good, but unfortunately you could only get it as a side, so I have decided I am going to have to suck it up and make my own. Later, we met up with our friends and went to Hongdae, so we could go to this special café.
It’s called the Bau Haus Dog Café. You can get a drink at the café and sit with twenty plus dogs roaming around. It smelled like a vet, but once you adjusted it wasn’t too bad. They had treats you could buy along with many toys, beds, shampoos, etc. We sat down and ordered a drink but were bummed no dogs came around to our table. After about 5 minutes we realized we needed to buy treats so the dogs would pay attention to us. That did the trick, but apparently we bought the kind the dogs didn’t like so only about 5 dogs came over to us, and that was with much coercing. One dog looked like Neil and I was so excited. I went and picked him up and he sat in my lap for 10 minutes eating and letting me pet him. I was so happy and kept calling him Neil, until a worker came up and said a family would like their dog back. Oops. They didn’t seem to mind, but quickly got their dog and left. We spent the rest of the day walking and shopping and had a great dinner of Mexican food that was similar to the Mexican restaurant I went to in Jeju. We will definitely go back.
Sunday, we woke up and went to city hall to meet our friends. We were early, so we walked around and discovered the Seoul Museum of Art, the U.S. Embassy and Gyeongbokgung Palace. We didn’t have much time, but we watched the changing of the guards, and I was able to take a couple of pictures from the outside. I definitely want to go back and actually tour the palace.
We met up with our friends and we went to Insadong. We tried to have a BBQ, but it didn’t work out so well for us. We tried to grill in a park that turned out to be a sacred memorial and then we tried along the Cheonggyecheon Stream, but we got about 5 kabobs grilled when we were told to stop again, so instead we sat along the stream and enjoyed the nice day.
We made our way to the festival area and looked at the lanterns and festivities. The parade wasn’t starting till seven, but I wanted good pictures so we found a spot early and camped out for several hours. The parade was beautiful, with groups of 50-100 people holding lanterns of different colors, shapes and styles. They even had huge lanterns that looked like floats from Mardi Gras, but unfortunately they kept going down a different street. These huge lanterns varied from cartoon characters, to huge peacocks with moving wings and even a fire-breathing dragon. Since I was in the front, several people in the parade gave me lanterns and Derek and I ended up with about four lanterns that we are going to put up in the apartment. Tired from the long weekend, and not wanting to ruin our pretty lanterns we left before the parade was over to head back to the island.
I haven’t put up the lanterns yet, but will make sure to post pictures once they are up in the apartment. In the meantime, here are pictures from the weekend and festival…
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