12th Seoul Silver Grass Festival

Last Friday, I went to Haneul Park (하늘공원) — located within the Seoul World Cup Park (월드컵공원 Subway Line 6) — to see the Silver Grass Festival that is going on right now with seoulstateofmind and inner.pastiche. It was a much needed break from all the studying that I've been doing all week so a walk in the park instead of reading books and hangul characters was definitely a more appealing option for a Friday afternoon. It was weekend after all :)

The weather was super duper nice that day — warm sunshine with blue sky, what more can I ask, really (I'm really a sucker for blue sky :p). This was my first time going to Haneul Park so I was imagining that it's just like any other park that you can just walk to. Apparently, it's located on some sort of a hill where you need to do a short hike up the stairs before you actually arrive at the park. After we got to the top, we just wandered around and enjoyed the view of waves of silver grass around the park. It was very pretty :) Anyways, the festival is going on from October 16th to 24th so anybody who's interested to go still can make it this week :) And oh, you might encounter lots of ahjummas wearing bright hiking outfits in the park taking pictures (at least we did).

// special thanks to Ken who was being a good sport modeling for us :) //

WWIM10Seoul

This past Saturday, I got a chance to join an instameet in Seoul that was hosted by Ken Lee from Seoulstateofmind (check out his blog if you haven't. He has a very cool photo collections). This was my first instameet experience and I got to say it was pretty interesting and fun. More than 40 people showed up for the event and everybody is from everywhere. It's kinda cool to meet people from different parts of the world. Since the group was kinda big, people split into smaller groups when exploring the areas. I walked together with 3 other people who I met that day for the first time and our group kinda get lost because we're pretty much always behind. Still, it was fun playing catch up and trying to find out where the rest of the group was :)

We started our route from Hyehwa Station (혜화역) and hiked up to Naksan Park (낙산공원) to see the view from the top. After that we headed down and explored the Ihwa Mural Village (이화 벽화마을), where they have these cool artworks painted on the walls around the neighborhood. Cheonggyecheon stream (청계천) was the next stop and for the last stop we made our way to Dongdaemun Design Plaza (동대문디자인플라자) and pretty much dispersed from there. I got some good shots, made new friends, and had a good time during the 4 hours we were doing the photowalk. Definitely going to go again if there's going to be one in the future. And special thanks to Ken Lee for organizing the event! 

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

You Are Here Cafe - Grand Opening Day

For those of you who know Eat Your Kimchi and Talk To Me In Korean, you probably heard about the cafe they're opening in Hongdae. So yesterday was the grand opening day for You Are Here Cafe and I (plus hundreds other nasties that were in town) showed our support by showing up for the big day. So here's how the day went.

On their video, they said that the cafe will open at 10 am. I got there a little late, around 10.10am-ish and there's already a line that was formed in front of the cafe (and it's quite far from the entrance of the cafe). If you see the picture below, the cafe entrance is approximately around where the trees are.

The line was moving pretty slowly and I think after 30 mins or so, there were even more people that came after me. The line has gotten really really long then after. About 50 mins in, Simon and Martina came out one after the other saying that they want buy water for people who were waiting in line. Very thoughtful of them :) So then minutes later, water was distributed to the people in line. Hyun Woo from TTMIK also came out to help distribute water. They also stopped and chatted with a couple of people, said hi, and took a couple of selfies.

Right in front of the gate, Soo Zee who was selling the EYK mugs. She was so nice too, chatting with people and taking pictures.

After about 1.5 hours or so, I finally stood on the front yard. More waiting, but at least I got to see how the place look like now. 

Finally inside the cafe! Took about 2+ hours or so. The first floor is where they have the counter, merchandise, the study room (which TTMIK is talking about in their video—I'm guessing), and a separate seating area. 

On to the second floor...

Even after I've been inside for a while, the line outside was still quite long..

Simon and Martina finally came to the 2nd floor and spent time hanging out with people. They listened to people's stories and chatted with them for quite some times (plus the usual signing and photo taking session). It was just like a fan-meet event. Simon and Martina were very friendly, approachable, and down to earth :) Same goes for Hyunwoo of TTMIK who I talked to briefly. 

Batting Cage

After our visit to the Museum of Flight, we decided to go to try the batting cage. None of us has been to one so it was another new experience for us. It was hard trying to hit the ball at first because we're not used to the speed and angle of the ball. Plus, we went right before sunset and the sun was right in front of us. So we were a little bit blinded by the sunlight. But after a couple of rounds, we got the hang of it.

With baseball, if you hit the wrong part of the bat, it hurt. Bad. The whole bat vibrates and you can feel a sting traveling through your arms. But when you hit it right, the feeling is really nice, especially when you hear the sound of the bat hitting the ball. With softball, I think it's a little easier and more forgiving when you don't hit it at the right spot since the ball is softer. At the end of our session, our arms were sore, but it was super fun. Definitely want to do it again sometimes.

Museum of Flight

The next day, we started our day at Pike Place Market. We went to Café Campagne for brunch with a friend of ours, Cindy. That was my first time visiting the place and the food was great. We ordered a bunch of thing to share and did it family style.

Two scrambled eggs with herbs, with potatoes, chicken & pork sausage, and baguette

French French Toast (Fried in Bourbon Egg Batter, served with Maple Syrup and topped with fresh fruit.)

Oeufs en Meurette (Poached eggs with a sauce of pearl onions, bacon, champignons in red wine – foie gras sauce on garlic croutons, pommes frites.)

Pommes Frites

After we finished with brunch, we went to Museum of Flight because (one of) my sister wanted to go. Thought it'd be fun since I've never been there too. We looked at a bunch of different planes from different eras. It was pretty cool. There was some kind of competition going on too that day (although I wasn't completely sure what it's all about), but we got to see some people building miniature planes and stuff.