Saturday morning we headed into Seoul and met up with my wife's great uncle, whose family owns a couple shops, one in a hotel and one in a market. He wanted to take us to a couple of the markets since he knows his way around them and knows what things are worth.
First we went to this flea market type thing that had many traditional items as well as a lot of old junk (picture 1 - is that an A track stereo?). At one of the markets we had fresh ginger drinks, kind of like a milkshake but no ice cream (picture 2). We also saw a traditional dance (picture 3) and had a bowl of makkeolli (picture 4), which seemed homemade since it was just in this huge jar and was pretty tasty.
For lunch we went to a small restaurant that was just on the corner of the street and only had like 10-15 seats total. They served cow intestine cooked up with a spicy sauce and some noodles and then they put it on your table in foil on top of a small gas hot plate that keeps it steaming hot (picture 5). You can eat it as is or put it in a lettuce wrap with some sauce and garlic. It was alright; didn't taste like too much to me, but it was really chewy.
After lunch we went to Insadong area, where there are a lot of souvenir type places and a lot of foreigners and (according to her great uncle, who has all the same stuff in their shops and knows the real prices) everything is expensive. We saw some people dressed as the king's entourage walking around (picture 6), drank coconut water straight from the coconut (picture 7), and ate some street food (picture 8). The street food was pretty good! The egg toast (picture 9) was tasty except interestingly the toast was kind of sweet flavored and the egg was a little overcooked. The little fish pastry filled with red bean (picture 10) looked really good but was not super fresh so it wasn't crispy on the outside or very hot.
After that we met up with her aunt and family and hung out for a while with them before dinner. Dinner was at a really nice restaurant and our room was in this little separate place that had water and stones leading to the entrance (picture 11)! Dinner was a multi-course affair, including sushi, japchae, jellyfish, salad (picture 12), duck, pork belly, a flat meatball kind of thing (picture 13), and finally some rice came out in a little stone pot with some side dishes (picture 14). You take the rice out and eat it with the other stuff and pour hot water in the pot with the leftover rice to make nurunggi with a kind of broth (picture 15) almost like rice porridge. Dessert was frozen blueberries that were delicious and refreshing (picture 16).
After all that we stayed in a nearby hotel for the night since we were going to church in the city the next day.
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