Om

Tonight we headed up to Samcheongdonggil, which reminds me of a college town in northern California with all of its eclectic shops and restaurants. We stopped at an Indian/Nepali restaurant called Om for dinner, and had a delightful meal.

Their cups, glasses, and silverware were an interesting copper/stainless mix that I've not seen in restaurants before.


We splurged on a bottle of wine. They served it in these glasses which did leave a slight metallic taste.


We ordered mutton korma (dish in front) and chicken curry (dish in back).


Garlic naan. One of the best things made ever. Nothing better than dipping naan in the curry sauce. I'd be happy with just the naan and the gravy.


For the two of us, two dishes with a dish of rice and 3 naan was just perfect. The spice level was just right for me, a confirmed wimp when it comes to spicy food. There was a slight kick, but it wasn't tear inducing, and it was flavorful. The mutton korma had a slightly sweet spicy taste to it, which I'm not sure was cardamom or not. This meal reminded me of a friend's description of Indian food one time, where she said she had no idea what she ate other than orange goo and green goo, but it was all good. We had orange goo, and it was very tasty.

Seoul at night

This is the fountain out in front of the Shinsegae Department Store near Namdaemun and Myeongdong. They turn off the water and put up lights during winter.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

There was a small Christmas cookie decorating party the other night, with Christmas music, and good food, and icing and sprinkles and cookies. With a few kittie cats for company.

Princess


Big O


Cookies...


And more cookies...

Thanksgiving Day Dinner...

... barbecued pork ribs


with three kinds of kimchi, onions, and beer.

Grilled Shellfish Lunch

Today's adventure was just excellent.  Good food, good scenery, good company.

First, we headed out towards Incheon using the new bridge that was just completed (the Incheon Long Bridge). According to Wikipedia, it is 7.6 miles long, and is apparently the longest bridge in Korea and the 7th longest bridge in the world based upon a quick Google search..  Once we crossed over to Incheon, we headed towards the airport and then to a small town nearby that has a shellfish restaurant.

This place is a covered area attached to a house/building, with a dirt floor, buckets to put the shells in, and toilet paper hanging from support beams throughout the restaurant.

At our table was a very rusted bottle opener attached to the table itself.


Lunch!!  We had oysters, clams (several types), scallops, mussels, and a couple of other things I didn't recognize (but they all tasted really good).  All were placed on the grill.  What they failed to mention is that for safety, you should be wearing safety goggles and heat resistant clothes.  As the shells heat up, they tend to fire off chunks of shell, or hot liquids.  In the foil wrapped packets are the oysters and some clams.  We also had ttoekbokki with seafood, which is a dish containing rice cakes cooked in a red sauce.  This version also had some vegetables in it.  The restaurant provided gloves for each diner to use to hold hot items.  These also had a bit of a grip to them, which assisted when trying to remove stubborn tasty bits from hot shells.


We also had peel and eat shrimp.  No question about freshness here -- these were jumping about as they were put on the fire.  They were grilled on a bed of salt.


The final course was hand cut noodles with clams.  The broth here was deceptive -- it doesn't look spicy, but it definitely had a delayed kick to it.  Most likely due to the peppers floating around in it.  Hand cut noodles are rolled out and then cut by hand.  This soup was absolutely filled with clams.  Yum.


We also had the obligatory kimchi and vegetable dishes.  The kimchi was excellent, had a nice bite to it, with a touch of sweet flavor.  One of the best I've had in a while.

Random food stuff

A bit too late for Halloween this year, but maybe for next year... Candy Corn Nanaimo Bars.

Again, too late for Halloween, but Creepy Hand Meatloaf would make an interesting Halloween dinner.

Monkey Bread... never heard of this until I moved to the south.  I've heard stories of people actually getting to work early on days they heard someone was bringing in monkey bread.

Walking to Samcheongdonggil

Palace gate, with police bus.  Police buses are a common sight.  Sometimes they line them up along the streets near the bell tower and block the right turn lane.  I haven't figured out if they just randomly move them around or if there's actually a plan.



Restaurants and shops on the hill along Samcheongdonggil.


If you squint, the yellow sign says View Terrace for Couples. We have no idea how you'd actually get up there, and neither one of us is in good enough shape to climb all the stairs going up there.

Bangkok 2009

I'm being lazy and just putting our Bangkok photos online in an album. At some point in time, I'll go in and add annotation explaining what some of the photos are of so I don't forgot what we saw. We had a great time! It was hot, humid, and work was far, far away. We wandered around temples, we ate good food, we saw wildlife, we avoided tuk-tuk drivers and Pat Pong sex show salesmen, and we saw houseplants gone wild. We went to a floating market - think Disney's Jungle Cruise meets tourist trap.

Bangkok 2009

You know you have the flu when...

...you're sitting in a room that's 79F wearing three layers and you're still cold and shivering.

...you wake up in the morning and feel like a steamroller ran over you during the night.

...your head hurts for 4 days straight.

After...

This is our new entertainment system.



It came with no instructions so we had to spend some time figuring out which of the two practically identical remotes works the TV and which the DVD player. Hint: the one with the little button that matches the button to open the DVD player is the one that works the DVD player.