SEOUL VISIT 2: DONGDAEMUN, LANTERN FESTIVAL AND MICROBREWERIES

SEOUL VISIT 2:  DONGDAEMUN, LANTERN FESTIVAL 

AND MICROBREWERIES 

After departing from Ange, Caley and Walker, I met up with my friend Van (mentioned here and here) up in Seoul.

Van with Darcie along the river

We met near in the Dongdaemun area of Seoul. "Dongdaemun" means "East Gate." Seoul has 4 main gates to the city (N, S, E, W).

Dongdaemun

Dongdaemun is also home to the Dongdaemun Market. A large shopping arcade with a wide variety of wares for sale. I ended up buying a nice flannel.

Dongdaemun Market

As with everything in Seoul, development is always quick and quickly advancing. This is the soon to be opened green-architecture inspired Dongdaemun Design Plaza. For more information visit here.

Dongdaemun Design Plaza

Next, Van and I walked along the stream that goes through Dongdaemun and soon discovered that there were lanterns on display for the Seoul Lantern Festival.

After killing some time downtown, we headed back to Itaewan. Itaewan, the foreigner enclave is quickly emerging as perhaps the hippest and most desirable neighborhood in all of Korea. It is an emerging hotbed of dormant subculture ready to emerge. Aside from all that hoo-ha you can find not 1 but TWO microbreweries there!  (You also have to realize that Korean beer is absolutely god awful, Miller High Life may be about as good as the best Korean beer)

The first microbrewery we visited was Magpie. Having recently opened, it's still quite small, but has 2 beers on tap: an IPA and an Espresso Stout. Both were phenomenal.

Next we went to the big dog of Seoul microbrew: Craftworks Brewery. It is home to about 7 microbrews (featured in the sampler below). I ordered the special: brisket with seasonal vegetables. The whole experience was heaven.

Next we had a parting drink at a classy cigar bar in Itaewan run by a Turkish guy. I don't smoke, but since South Korea has no sanctions against Cuba, you can get Cuban cigars.

Turkish Cigar Bar Purveyor

They had 3 beers on the menu. Two normalish beers (Heineken, Budweiser(?)) and then of all beers Anderson Valley; one of my favorite beers from my days in California.

This place was so classy it felt straight out of the glossy pages of a liquor advert. 

After this, I departed back to the train station to take the train back to Changwon leaving Seoul at close to 10PM

Pictured (l-r): Van and Me (and my new shirt!)