Day trip to Dongdaemun

When our faithful sitter announced that her last days in Korea were upon us, I did what any normal person would do, and tried to book her for as many days as humanly possible. While this isn't what we originally planned on doing, we flipped through a book on Seoul after we got on the train and decided that this is where we'd go.

We popped out of the subway and behold, one (of the eight!) Seoul Gates was staring us down!

We passed a few food vendors and then crossed the street for the market. We didn't know anything about this place, other than a market existed here (we didn't know exactly where everything was), but we wandered around and found tons and TONS of vendors. Pop-up tents, folding tables, flattened cardboard boxes, opened trucks- you name it, people were selling stuff on it. Unfortunately, we are not in the right size bracket to shop for clothes in Korea (too "large-y" and tall), so we skipped digging through the mounds of clothes (usually selling for about a buck a piece!). We went through mazes of people and kept finding little alleys to explore, most people in the area selling similar things. We went down an alley to find nothing but shoes. Just a half-mile of shoes! We got Molly a pair of knock-off hot pink Converse sneakers for about $5.

A man passing by giggled at me as I took a picture of the thong mannequin. I mean, how could I NOT?!

Our Seoul book says that Dongdaemun comes alive at night, and while a lot of shops were closed, there were plenty of vendors out there during the morning hours. One section was selling all sorts of animals- rabbits, hedgehogs, chickens, mice, guinea pigs, a rooster, fish; they were all huddling together trying to stay warm!

Pay phone booths are everywhere here. Which blows my mind, so I take a picture of just about every one I see.

After we were frozen solid, we headed into a nearby mall (Doota- what a name) to get some lunch.

The ladies' bathroom ended up having a tremendous view of the gate, which led to me being that American taking pictures in the bathroom, which led to Steve growing concerned over what must be going wrong with my bowels. I assured him I was fine and that there was a huge plate glass window by the sinks! Boys' bathroom didn't have that. Heh.
We had a delicious Korean lunch and Steve got a coffee afterwards to get the kimchi taste out of his mouth. The coffee place was selling these crepes (plastic renderings of food are everywhere- very helpful for me) and I kinda regret not going for the nutella-banana crepe. It was probably fantastic...

We went up on the mall's outdoor deck area on the top floor, and I took this craptastic great panoramic photo of the area below.

Then we rode the escalator back down 8 floors....

Steve, holding our trash bags of loot. What a saint that man is.

Mini coffee- check! Off to see more!

We jumped back on the subway and headed to Yongsan, because we don't pass up the opportunity to browse the Class 6 without children in tow. Our time in Seoul was winding down and we took our achey breaky feet back to the train. Where there were no seats. A flying squirrel finally got up and told me to take his seat (I kid you not, I wish I'd snapped a picture) and I got to sit for the rest of the train ride back home. I'm feeling it today, but there's no rest for the weary- it snowed last night and is still coming! Off to shovel and scoop and rearrange gloves and wipe snotty noses and make hot chocolate.

**Edited to add that today marks three years of blogging! Wowza!**