After a long and much-appreciated night's sleep in Busan's "Motel Prada" I went out for my first little explore this morning, to find some breakfast and a bank where I could cash a few traveler's checks.
Though I was a little discouraged when the hotel concierge told me there was nothing but "kimchi-ga and water" nearby, an initial walk down the street quickly proved otherwise. The streets are narrow and crowded with high rise buildings and bright, neon signs featuring winking cartoon figures and (to me) indecipherable hangul titles. But I don't mind that everything seems like secret code, I have a hunch that if I could read them I might not find them so pleasant : ) The street level of these high rises is- about 75% of the time- some kind of food venue, be it a cafe, a noodle joint, or someplace with a lot of pictures of raw meat on the windows. My favorite so far was a "sliced raw fish" restaurant with a few big aquariums outside its door on the sidewalk. Where in America you could expect to see those aquariums filled with lucky crabs or lobsters, these ones featured eels, rockfish, and some kind of eyeless fish(?) with a sucker on its head that I never even knew existed.
On my way to the bank I couldn't help but stop in a couple different cafes, where I got surprisingly good iced americanos (albeit without cream, I don't think milk in coffee is a "thing" here), some premium walnut pastry balls (a bag of twelve donut-hole-like things, still hot, filled with chocolate/nut cream and a walnut...great! Though I thought I was ordering one...) and then some "fleecy cloud bread" (ambiguous, but delicious).
People here are fairly receptive to my extremely limited Korean skills, and usually know a bit of English and go out of their way to help me communicate. When I try to say anything in Korean (I've got "hello" and "thank you" down) I invariably get giggled at, which I might find disheartening if it weren't so adorable and I presume, well-meaning.
So at first taste? I like Korea!! I'm looking forward to sharing more adventurous adventures, but for a first jaunt around the block, this was pretty fun.
(Apologies for the lack of pictures so far, limited resources for uploading atm)
Stay tuned, folks : )
XOXO
-A
No comments:
Post a Comment