Day 3 - 24/3 Hongdae, NANTA show

Decided on going to Hongdae as we weren't early enough for the Gyeongbokgung palace.  

This guy is bothering me

It was early spring, so FLOWERS! 

Mummy says these are dog-faced pansies

Just a tad too early for cherry blossoms though.

Us and cherry BUDS

We walked around a bit.  The Line forest park wasn't impressive and we didn't see the lively streets I expected.  Headed to Mangwon market after a while.  Lots of food for sale but I was too excited to take photos.  JE proved her worth... she located this dodgy-looking staircase.

Here, let's go down

At the bottom was the famous 'hotteok'/Korean pancake!  Yay this pancake was on my list but I didn't come across this shop during my research.  Loved the setup, street food prepared fresh in a spacious basement.  Ordered one tagged 'original' and one tagged 'best'.

 

Frying and prepping 

One original and one cheese

While both had brown sugar filling, the 'best' was then rolled in cheese powder which was... just too much powder gahh.  Anyway how bad can freshly-fried be?  JE and me enjoyed chewing the piping hot pancakes while SE only took a tiny bite.   

Lunch was SE's pick - a hole in the wall which looked well-patronised.  JE got a big bowl of noodles.  SE wanted bibimbap which in this shop turned out to be a big bowl of (only) beansprouts on rice.  The friendly waitress 'auntie' recommended to put sauces in.  She squeezed some into SE's bowl which SE didn't want, being the minimalist at the moment.  Auntie mistook SE's apprehension and kept reassuring her the sauce wasn't spicy.  She motioned to the other sauce and stood there smiling.  I swear she looked like she was going to start feeding SE like a baby next!  Hahaha.  At KRW4500 a serving, this was our cheapest meal in Korea.  It was 90% carbs though the taste was pretty ok.  

Carbs everywhere

After that we walked to the Han River.  Walked through a pedestrian tunnel...

Rabbit pops out

Rabbit goes in

The day was warm and JE got grumpy.  Well sometimes travelling as we do, relying on our own research to plan what to do and where to go, things don't always turn out perfectly.  We ended up very far from our next destination.  At least we learned how to take the bus using the Naver app.  :)  The app tells you where to board the bus, when it is coming and which stop to get off.

Made it in good time for our NANTA show.  This was a 90-min live show combining comedy, dance, audience interaction... the performers put in their all to entertain.  Sure some parts were slightly over the top but if you're determined to enjoy it like I was, you probably will.  I did sneak a peek at JE and SE who looked rather bored.  So I ignored them and laughed my way through the show.  Our S-seats cost RM115 per ticket - got lucky as a buy1-free1 offer suddenly appeared. on Klook.  (If only hubby had been there... we could have taken buy2-free2 sigh.)  

Haiyaa!

Wallpaper with funny chefs

Walked around after the show looking for dinner.  Decided on this Dakgalbi place.  Oh this was nice.  The veggies were 'self-bar' style i.e. take as you like from the serving counter. The pan of chicken and cheese looked huge when it arrived but we ended up demolishing it. 

 

This was yums!

I had hoped to catch street performances which were supposedly common in Hongdae and yes, they were.  Some sang, some danced.  This group was pretty good.  It had a red-haired guy and a blond one.  Overall we saw many people in Korea with hair in bright colours, possibly due to the Kpop influence.

 

Dancing group behind me

We watched this group a while.  JE doesn't have much interest if it wasn't one of her favourite groups though!  To me, overall a decent day with some good parts.