First day in Korea (4)

With less than an hour left to our designated tour to Cheong Wa Dae, otherwise known as the Blue House (the executive office and official residency of South's Korea's President), we were faced with the challenge of filling up our tummy within the time frame.
Despite the tight schedule, we had one advantage to our side, the free shuttle leaves from our current location at Gyeongbukgung, at the exit of the road - Samcheongdong-gil.
Lucky for us, there was a restaurant directly across the road.

  

Looks nice doesn't it? Actually, I wasn't even sure if this is a restaurant. The one we visited, was the shop upstairs. The one with the white signboard and the words 'Korean Restaurant'.

You can catch the words 'bibimbap' in the picture, which was exactly what most of us ordered. Pitto ordered the cold version of the dish, which had additional strips of meat. Ours came in a sizzling hot pot. Like this:

And what is a Korean meal without the customary yummy side dishes?

 

If you've enjoyed Korean meals in Malaysia, then trust me, it tastes even better in Korea. This meal cost us 7,000 Won, which comes to about....RM19.90. It sounds expensive when you convert it, but remember, there are always side dishes to the main meals and they can be refilled for free, which we did several times for the kimchi.

While we enjoyed the meal immensely, we completely missed the shuttle to Cheong Wa Dae.

We were told that the last tour was at 3pm (we were required to board the shuttle 20 minutes prior) but upon inquiry, we found out there was another tour due at 4pm.

Perplexed at being told about the last tour being 3pm, we nevertheless made arrangements for the 4pm session. It was only later that we found out why we were informed as such which I will explain in the next post.

Since we had time to kill, we headed out to a cafe nearby (we realised many of their outlets are kinda built into the ground - basement style where you had to take the stairs deep down under the building) and ordered dessert.

 

To the waitress' dismay, we made our orders Malaysian style - one item with four spoons. Haha....and with great effort (she wasn't proficient in English), she told us it was not allowed. 

Before anyone brands us as cheapskates, in our defense, we were all bursting to the brim after the satisfying meal of bibimbap coupled with refills of the restaurant's wonderful kimchi.

So, we proceeded to order another cheesecake to accompany the ice dessert.

I was later told by a friend that this dessert is the Korean version of Cendol.

This time, we kept track of the time and went on to board the shuttle bus, right on schedule.

To be continued........