Koreana Hotel Buffet Breakfast - Seoul

Performance at the Airport

 

Whenever we were in Seoul, our tour group always stayed at the Koreana Hotel. 

After the disaster that was the Del Pino breakfast buffet, we were so grateful for our Seoul breakfasts. The hotel was okay, but in South Korea you have to pay for things like toothbrushes, toothpaste and extra bottles of water (when other hotels across Asia provide these things for free).  It's kind of scary when you see that your toothbrush set costs ₩3,000 (~ $3 CAD)

Restaurant for the Breakfast Buffet

Omelette with cheese and ham

The eggs were a little runny (or watered down) which made the omelette not as deliciously egg-y tasting. 

  

Western style breakfast on the left and Asian breakfast on the right

Western style breakfast had pancakes, french toast, fruit salad, yogurt (which was pretty good despite being a bit watery) and the Asian breakfast had miso soup (really good - I went back for more helpings), hard boiled eggs, seaweed on rice and some kind of fish. 

Omelette, "hat cakes" (pancakes), sausages and miso soup

Sadly, it wasn't maple syrup (just normal simple syrup)

 

Hot dogs, salad, noodles, omelette and more miso soup

The salad bar was pretty good - they constantly changed the salad leaves (I had chicory on another day). Dumpling weren't that great. 

Seoul (Day 2) - South Korea

We finally came back to Seoul for the last two days before flying out tomorrow!
We went to Myeongdong to go shopping. Fun fact about Korean department stores: it's not one gigantic retailer (like Hudson's Bay Company, Sears, Macy's etc.) instead it's a massive mall with a lot of smaller individual shops.  Another interesting point about Korean culture: there were also a lot of younger girls wearing surgical masks in Myeongdong and it's took me a while before I realized they weren't wearing them because they were sick.

Lunch at JNJ Dragon! Finally something with an English name :D

All vegetarian side dishes

More hot pot, but this time with dumplings instead of meat.
There were also cloud ear fungus, chicory, tofu skin, tofu, carrots and free second helpings of dumplings. The dumplings were good! And in this case, we got soy sauce instead of hot sauce and they were still good.

Seoul at Night

Our last dinner was ramyun:

 Other ingredients: strips of canned ham, sprouts, luncheon meat, green onions, tofu and more.


A decent low budget meal
I find it fascinating that North Korean elites enjoy "ramyeon" - it's such a reversal from the rest of the world where the poor eat instant noodles because it's so cheap. 

Seoul (Day 1) - South Korea

We booked a 6 day tour for $199 to visit Seoul, Korea with Nexus Tours. 

The first full day of the tour got off to a good start with a bus trip out of Seoul to Imjingak to see the Korean Demilitarized Zone (and see North Korea from a distance). 

 
Fenced Area with peace ribbons
 
The bridge across to North Korea (they also had a Heritage Train on display).

Afterwards, we went to the Cheongwadae (Korean Presidential residence) and Gyeongbokgung (The Palace) and saw Seoul at night 

We were relying on the tour guides to take us around places (since we don't understand Korean) and the tour company chose our restaurants without really telling us the names (so most of the restaurants on the tour are "nameless" to me).

We made kimchi!

 Lunch
  
 Side dishes
 
Pork meat, enoki mushrooms, Chinese mushrooms, carrots, tofu strips, scallions and cloud ear fungus
The hot pot was okay - rather bland until you added soy sauce or hot sauce. Surprisingly, the hot sauce in Korea isn't very hot and it's flavourful (otherwise a lot of their dishes would be really bland).

Funnily enough, dinner was hot-pot again:

 

They look almost exactly the same right? But this one had octopus! haha
Again - I wouldn't know what I would have used to season it without the hot sauce.