seoul is hot...

seoul is hot, well at least the food is… we got off our flight to find south korea a cool 13°c (about 59°f). without a hotel, we were expecting a little hardship finding a room on friday night in insadong, seoul. luck seems to be on our side though, as we easily converted money, booked a room blocks away from the area we wanted to stay in and made our way directly to the bus that would take us there. i guess there is something to be said about alina's diligent travel planning for the last nine months… we quickly got settled into the hotel and hit the streets to find dinner. i was immediately reminded of our experiences in japan - walking around hungrily looking into restaurants full of happy dinners (no english signs, menus or faces…) after a few passes, we decided to break the ice at a grocery selling skewers on the street. we asked for one in the international language of charades and were given an enormous skewer of spicy tofu (similar to japan's yuba) served with a small cup of the very spicy broth it was just simmering in. we followed the local's lead, brushed it with shoyu steeped with fresh chiles and quickly devoured it - the spicy hot broth was a warming finish to the snack. afterwards we found our way into a korean style fast-food stop. also similar to japan - the menu came complete with pictures, making our jobs much easier. we asked for dolsot bibimbap, a hotpot of rice, veggies, seaweed, sesame, a raw egg and gochujang (a spicy red chile paste that korea embraces much like america's love of ketchup…). our second dish was a bubbling hot crock of kimchi, sliced pork, squid, fish cake and tofu. the broth was red and thick from the chiles in the kimchi and the effect it had on us was similar to a strong prescription nasal decongestant - in short it was hot. the norm with any korean meal is an array of small side dishes, called banchan. our modest restaurant gave us three - their kimchi, which was fermented, spicy and really good. next were pickled hot peppers with small dried, fermented fishes, the peppers had an affect on alina similar to the 'habanero incident' in maui. last was the only non-spicy dish on the table, a mixture of bean sprouts and carrots. we capped the night with a 20 oz cass fresh, korea's non-pasteurized beer of choice - effervescent and slightly sour - a great end to our first night in seoul.
this morning, after breakfast, we are going to move to a guesthouse right off of insadonggi (antique road, a popular spot full of restaurants, street vendors and small artisan shops).