I make my noodles the way I like my noodles, and only an ajumma will tell me otherwise

25112023 and then 25112023 again

Departure day, our return flight was planned for 2000 with the hopes to do some things during the day, which ends of being kind of a mixed back. My getting to airports on time anxiety kind of colors the whole day, but in this case having a whole 10+ waking hours before the flight we were actually able to get out and see some stuff.

The second hotel in Seoul was labeled as a 3-Star hotel, but had great reviews, the pictures looked fine, and we have stayed at other 3 star hotels (namely in Japan) that were just fine, this Hotel Nafore was not. Firstly, its tucked deep back in an old industrial neighborhood.

which was fine for us, but a less adventerous Western travelly may not be comfortable with. The lobby was fine, and the staff was friendly, but when we got into our room the first night it was very hot, like 80F+ in the room, there was also boot prints on the walls. The heat we figured could just be turned off/down in that first night, and the boot prints were under the finish of the wood. While less an indicator of cleanliness, it did imply the amount of attention to detail/concern for presentation went into the construction/finishing of the rooms. And comparing our hotel room, to the pictures on the website, we believe we got the not-recently-updated rooms. After literally sweating through the first night (its november in Seoul, it was in the mid 40Fs all night) we complained about the heat and the front desk showed us the Air Conditioning is operated via the TV Remote...OK...I have some ethical issues with blasting AC in the wintertime when we could just turn the heat off, but I think the place had in floor heating (as mentioned before https://danswritingsonnonsense.blogspot.com/2016/11/consorts-and-calendars.html) that was probably controlled at the entire floor/building level. Over the course of the night the automatic light in the entryway of our room (meaning IN our room) would randomly turn on off throughout the night. We woke up on that second day and investigated moving to a new hotel. All of the hotels in the area were either booked up or very expensive (like 300USD+/night), we also tapped the concierge number on the back of our Chase Sapphire Reserve card* so we resolved to stay at the place, armed with the knowledge of at least how to cool the room. On the second night I went down stairs to talk to the front desk regarding the light, but the night guy was clearly the night guy that knew very little about the job, he gave my about 5 feet of electrical tape and scissors to try and cover the light. This did not work. So the next day when the best English speaker was on duty we brought him to our room, and he turned the light to "always off" (I would point out that I also flipped the switch on the base of the light fixture and it seemed to do nothing, I guess he knew to cheat the switch by setting it to a middle position). So ultimately it was only our last night that we got any good sleep in. I mention all of this only because it cemented a lesson for Laura and I; if we both have a gut feeling about a place upon walking in, start complaining immediately. I think if we had, before opening our bags, gone to the desk asked for a different room we may have had a more pleasant experience, or stepped up our dilligence to find a new place.

With that rant out of the way, the rest of our day.

we elected to go over to the Bukchon Hanok Village (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukchon_Hanok_Village) which we had been in before, and was nearby enough to not stress us out about being too far from the hotel. The

The area has many sturctures that have been around for the last 100+ years, many have been beautifully maintained. As typical of us, we stopped to get coffees, Laura went to a little espresso bar, and holding to my earlier declaration to only get the elaborate drink did not get anything from this spot, because nothing was exotic enough. And I am so glad I did,

I dont often evangelize for a specific product on this blog, and I do not get anything for you clicking their links but this place had butter cream coffee, check out their insta for promo pics of the drinks as my pic didnt show the layers https://www.instagram.com/halff_coffeeroasters/
It was one of the most decadent things I have ever had, the cream was so fine, but still thick, was butterscotch-y, but a little biscoff-y.

After walking and coffeeing we were pretty hungry, we went to Mukshidonna in Samcheongdong (which is the neighborhood surrounding the old timey village).

I am unsure what this style of stew/soup is called, it is not really Korean "Army Stew" but its not shabu shabu/hot pot. The broth and ingredients are brought out not-hot (though unsure if raw) and the hotplate in your table brings it up to temp. This spot specializes in the tteokbokki in the broth. You get to choose if you want regular, spicy or seafood broth, then choose the type of noodle, and meat goes into it. We got spicy, beef, "chewy" noodles, and extra ramen noodled (yes the instant kind). I prefer my instant ramen very slightly underdone, and as such, I began pulling some noodles into my bowl to eat, and the lady running the place yelled at me, and gave me the crossed-hands no no no no no, and put my noodles back in the broth and poked around the pot for a few seconds and went off to service another customer. And then about 25 seconds later gave us the OK to eat. I am sure foreigner make plenty of mistakes in there (I mean, we already made some cuilinary mistakes on the trip) so I don't begrudge her forcing me to cook my noodles beyond my preference...

We then walked back to our hotel, through the neighborhood we were previously staying in. We chose to do this because we were certain there was a grocery store that carried the ginseng extract for a fair price that we could bring back as gifts. All of the tourist spots that sold those kinds of products were marked up pretty aggressively. On the way to said grocery store we stopped in the little local makers market, and now being a midafternoon Saturday we found some really cool stuff. We got a tshirt and poster from a shop selling from TimidTales collective (https://www.instagram.com/timidtales_creativestudio/) and from another cool artist (will update with insta link later, a significant proportion of my readers will soon be recieving gifts from this artist, and I dont want to ruin the surprise), Laura got some traditional Korean crafts too.

Retrieving our things from the hotel, we started our trek to the airport, via subway, and then special airport subway and then feet, we got to the airport with plenty of time to get dinner at the lounge our fancy travel cards get access to.

We drank probably 7 glasses beer (admittedly 330ml) between us, and tried most of the things out of the buffet. Considering this was "free" to us, all of the food was pretty good, If we had paied for lounge access, I dont think it would be worth the 40USD/person entrance fee. We got onto our flight, and 9.5 hours later we arrived in Seattle at 1230. Which as you may recall was basically 7.5 hours before we left. With the fancy travel cards, we got the renewal fees reimbursed for Global Entry, which puts you in the short line for customs (kind of like what TSA Pre-Check used to be). Mine was approved within hours, but Laura is still awaiting judgement. I dont fully understand way, but customs in the new international terminal at SEA was a shitshow. Despite all of the lanes being open, the line was probably 3 hours long? Like well beyond the zig-zagging line dividers, they had personnel snaking the line around the baggage claims. While in line (and throughout the international terminal) the loudspeaker was advertising Mobile Passport Control App for US citizens. Laura downloaded that while in line, and scanned her passport, and answered the same 4 questions that the CBP agent would have asked, and she got to go to the MPC line, where the CBP agent asked for clarification on her "yes" answer about having food, and she was through. My Global Entry CPB officer asked more questions, but also sent me on my way after 30 seconds of interaction.

I did make it home with the Nuruk

The Makgeolli starter is here, and I will begin experiments next weekend. We were in our home by 1400.

I will try to go back through this trips posts and include links to restaurants that we ate at.

* I have feelings about upper-end travel credit cards, one of the services that comes with the 400USD+ annual fee associated with these cards is access to a travel concierge service, in the case of the CSR the Visa Infinite services. I had suspicions that the number on the back of the card has access to almost nothing that I dont already have access to, and in most cases would have less knowledge of the places I am visting than I gained through my pre-travel research (for example offering someone in a hotel in Rosemont and calling in Chicago), and this experience cemented my opnions. I love the travel rewards that come with these cards, especially in the first year when getting sign-up bonuses, but it gets very hard for me to justify a 595USD annual fee when your travel portal prices or availability (including cash/points back) doesnt beat aggregators and hotel/airline/etc direct prices or availability, and your concierge services need as much prep time to properly service me as I need to service myself. I also have specific (free-to-play) credit cards in my wallet that optimizes rewards across my spending categories such that I only use these cards for travel purposes.
I recognize many may not want to, or have the time to do the kind of research (or credit card churning) that I do, in which case, spend those big bucks to get a solid product.