Around Town

We took a late afternoon trip to the National Theater right by Namsan (a small mountain--more like a tall hill--in the middle of Seoul. It used to mark the southern border of the city, but the city has grown so much it's now smack dab in the middle). After doing some sight-seeing and walking around, we headed to Myeongdong where driving through the streets is like trying to part the Red Sea. The reason for the 'street walking' is that there are no sidewalks so people have to walk in the street. If there were to try and build sidewalks, there would be not street. The streets of Myeondong are typical of all older neighborhoods north of the Han River (the older part of town)--narrow, winding, crowded. It gets extremely congested, so cars going through have to go through very slowly. Still, some idiots (you can imagine; mostly motorcyclists) make efforts at barreling through the crowd, which makes me very, very nervous when I'm walking with my kids through the streets. The evening sky was pretty stormy, which made a pretty nice picture. The weather is cooling day-by-day and the leaves on the trees are slowly turning. Pretty soon, we'll be deep into autumn. I'm pretty excited about this since the Bay Area has only very subtle season changes and I haven't experienced a real fall since leaving Indiana.

We parked the car by Myeongdong Cathedral and walked to this Seolleongtang restaurant. According to Wikipedia:

"Seolleongtang is a Korean soup made from the bones of the four legs of an ox, with the front legs giving better taste. Generally, only salt and green onions are used as seasoning. Usually, ground black pepper is served with the dish. It is typically cooked over a period of several hours to an entire day, to allow the flavor to be gradually extracted from the bones. It has a milky off-white, cloudy appearance and is normally eaten together with rice and several side dishes; the rice may be added directly to the soup."

Well, there you go. It's, perhaps, the one food the kids eat unfailingly well. While barbecue is usually a favorite, the kids will aways go for seolleontang when given the choice. It's similar to gomtang (literally 'bear soup' because it gives you the strength of a bear; i.e. it' healthy) and the kids, especially Dahin, LOVE both equally well. Gomtang is only different because it is made with different beef parts, but you boil it for a very long time just like seolleongtang and the taste and look are similar. This restaurant, apparently, was featured in a drama and next to our table hung a photo of the two stars of the drama dressed in the same clothes as the people working in the restaurant.

Jack cuts up the kaktugi (hot radish kimchi), a type of winter kimchi that now (thanks to kimchi fridges) is seen all year round. I think it is Ronan's favorite type of kimchi.

Below, Ronan enjoys some kaktugi with his seolleongtang.

Oliver demonstrates the delicate eating method for seollangtang--add some salt, dump some rice in your soup, and go for it. Poor baby--he's getting eaten up by mosquitos. All the kids are covered in mosquito bites, and the closer we get to cooler weather the more aggressive those suckers are being. Even with mosquito repellent, the kids, especially, are being attacked nightly. You can see that, on the boys, their faces seem to be a favorite snacking spot for those nasty buggars.

We strolled through Myeongdeong a bit after dinner. I took a shot of the crowd to show how jam-packed the streets get. People had also congregated outside the coffee shop on the right because a minor celebrity was on the second floor, seated by the window, with his girlfriend. It only added to the crowding a little; Myeondeong is just congested no matter what time of day you go and not matter what's happening.