Hello Kitty Cafe and Traditional Tea

In Seoul, we did not have a lot of time. In fact, we completely cut going to see the Tim Burton exhibit :(
Well, I cut that because I realized "hey, I might have liked him in the past, but he's kind of really annoying now. I guess it doesn't matter if I see this exhibit."
So, we went somewhere better:

THE HELLO KITTY CAFE

in Hongik University

So many delicious flavor options and addoooorible cakes shaped like Hello Kitty. Also, a cute little gift shop. Best part of said gift shop was the Hello Kitty in Hanbok (traditional Korean clothes). Guess what, Korea?

Hello Kitty is suuuper Japanese, and we all know it.

This is incredibly funny to me, because the Koreans (generally) HATE Japan. Good job sticking it to the man, Korea.

Regardless of the funny korea-japan fail, the cafe was awesome. I got a mint mocha, and Garrett got a latte, with a foamy cocoa powdery Hello Kitty face on top. I made him take, like, 20 photos before we could sit down.

I followed him around looking for shoes for a couple hours, so it evened out.

Obviously, everything was pink. Even the bathroom was pink and cute. There were Hello Kitty-shaped chairs, and Hello Kitty-shaped face cut out of one of the walls.

I was very sad that the drinks came in paper take-out cups instead of cute mugs. Kind of ruined it for a moment, but that's how most coffee places roll, now.

If you want directions, I am too lazy to go through the shit, now. Instead, I give you this person's page:

http://rawrkorea.blogspot.kr/2011/08/hello-kitty-cafe-directions-cats-living.html

At the bottom are the directions we used. Just be warned that the landmarks are no longer there (Paris Baguette, etc.), but the map is still 100% right :)

While the Hello Kitty Cafe is kind of a huge girl-tradition, and wayguk-tradition (everyone was just running around taking pictures), we also fulfilled a dream I had since day 1: find a real, traditional tea place.

This was surprisingly hard. Everything in Busan seems to be about coffee, and being fresh, fashionable and foreign.

In Seoul, we visited Insadong (the traditional area). This is also where we found everyone's presents, that we will be mailing off soonish, BTW. In this area, we found poop-shaped street food (they are obsessed with poop over here), Indian food, art shops, and passed by a number of cafes and tea shops. We were searching for one place that supposedly had live birds flying around but, alas, it had closed. We stumbled through a smoky alleyway and...tadah! It was a hanok tea shop. It was clearly a newer building (not one of the traditional, old, old, old hanoks), but it was gorgeous. The wood was all shiny and bright, and as the sign later told us, it was the first two-story hanok ever built. Named DK for some reason or another, the first floor was a jewelry store and the second was the tea shop. 

We basically had to go in. On the menu, I saw something no one else would get excited about : chrysanthemum tea.

In one of my Kdramas, set in 1500's/1600's Korea, the king's doctor prescribes him a bunch of traditional stuff to make him feel better--including chrysanthemum tea. I thought that was just the niftiest thing. I'm going to trust Korean-hollywood here and assume it is actually considered herbal medicine.

I had to let the hot water sit until the chrysanthemum flowers opened, then transfer it into a wide-mouthed cup to cool, then into a little cup to drink out of. The lady came over and talked about how cold it was. When I agreed, she brought me a blanket. Luckily, I looked around and it seemed all the girls had blankets, so I felt less ridiculous.

We also ordered some traditional Korean snacks -- the darker ones are the Yakgwa (honey cooookiiees), that are my favorite korean snack, in the first place, so this was heavenly--sitting on the floor with my tea, blanket, and homemade korean cookies. Garrett got a quince tea (like apples), and it was very sweet and delicious. Behind me was a giant jug of what looked like stewing quince, so we guess they let it sit for a long time to get flavorful.

After everything, it was a little pricey, but more than worth it.

We also discovered that, to use the bathroom, you actually had to go outside, downstairs, slip on some house shoes, and then go inside again. It was funny and Korean :P

Now, if you want directions for this one--oops.

I will tell you what we did. Walk down the main Insadong street from the main road (from the direction of Anguk Station). You'll see this big shopping center/almost strip mall to the left (where they sell the poop-snacks!). Immediately after is an alleyway. It's only, like, 10 yards down the street. Also, if it's late at night, try looking for the alleyway filled with street-vendor smoke! When we walked through, it was like walking through clouds!!