3rd time's a charm?
Yes yes, this is coffee shop hunting part 2, but this little gem above is actually the 3rd place we went to. Having decided to continue our search last night, we planned to stop at a fairly large chain, Angels In Us, that we've seen in Incheon, Daejeon, Jeonju... everywhere, really. There are several large coffee chains here in Korea, and Angels looked most inviting, particularly the location nearest our apartment. We stepped in, enticed by the shiny promotional posters in the windows, only to back out with our jaws agape. I'm all for atmosphere, and even paying a little extra for it from time to time, but 5,300 won for a coffee drink is outrageous to me. That's about $5 for you guys Stateside; in other words, about $1.50 more than the fanciest drink I used to order at Starbucks or Joe Mugg's when I happened to go there. No thanks!
So we decided to mosey on over to another part of our neighborhood where we thought we may have seen a coffee and gelato place. But by happy accident, on the way to it, we discovered Bean & Bean, which is definitely our new favorite coffee place/ hangout. The whole interior is done in dark wood, with plush deep red booths and 19th century British relics, including a huge wall of chintz cups and saucers- which they actually use to serve the hot drinks!
The place almost has the feel of an old train station or pub. It's wonderful! The menu board is all in English, which was quirky but convenient, and the prices were much better than Angels at around 4,200 won for the most expensive drink. I went for the iced cafe vienna, and Karl had an iced caramel macchiato. The barista even spoke a little English, which made us feel even better.
The quality of these pictures is admittedly terrible- my camera takes beautiful shots outside in the daylight, but it freaks out at night. Maybe it's afraid of the dark or something. I did what I could, but I'll take more pictures when we go back during the day. It's been so nice in the afternoons and evenings that we've been taking walks as it gets dark. Here's a neat shot of our building that I took coming home from Bean & Bean:
Ours is the one with the big window. Lovely, no?
Tomorrow we have to trek back to the immigration office to finally pick up our ARCs, hurrah! It's only been a week, but it feels like so much longer because we're prevented from doing so many things without one, like getting internet service and cell phones. I loathe the picture that will be on mine because they informed us the day we arrived here that they were taking us to get passport-size photos for the ARCs. Nice. Thanks for the warning, guys. I'm definitely still jet-lagging in mine and I need a shower, but other than that, nice. Anyway I'll just be relieved to have it. The number on it and the fact that I have it will definitely outweigh the nasty picture. Maybe I'll just put a Hello Kitty sticker over the photo part. That's it.
Glamour shot of us in front of our beloved Lotte Mart (think upscale Target):
I'm holding a bag of Skin Food brand products-- highly recommended! My skin started freaking out with the change in weather and lack of air conditioning here, so I decided to try switching to something local. I'm glad I did because it really seems to be working. I got a seaweed extract cleanser that guarantees to leave your skin squeaky clean, and I'd say it lives up to its word. The other one I got is an exfoliant scrub, which sounded really nice, "black sugar scrub," but which turned out to be for men. So now I smell a little manly after I wash up in the morning, but I can deal with it since it makes my skin so smooth. But the best part in my opinion about this brand is the free samples that come with it! I only bought those two things and they gave me five awesome samples! You have to spend something like $100 at Sephora to even get their samples, but this stuff they just freely hand out. They even had some samples sitting around the display in the store. Love it!
Tama is getting big so fast, and more hyper each day. He's also gotten a little picky about his food- he only wants to eat the imported American brand wet food, not the dry food. Who'd have thought such a kitten would be finicky? It's amazing to think how sick he was just over a week ago. These days I get my exercise in by playing chase with him!
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