Korea Trip 2018: Day 2 (Cont’d)

Monday morning, September 10, 2018 – Day 2 of Korea Trip 2018: Sights from around my hotel area… I was staying at the Center Mark Hotel in Seoul…

After breakfast, I took a walk outside the hotel – this was 8:30 a.m. and there were many people commuting to work (or school). It was WARM…. holy cow…

The walk had come after my breakfast at the hotel:

View from one of the top floors in the hotel – looking out the window…

Then, to a temple near the hotel… Man, tons of people were here – it was now after 10 a.m. … I guess these folks don’t have to work!

Food time… first, Subway for lunch….

Then, in the late afternoon, street food…

(More to come later…)

Center Mark Hotel Breakfast (Incheon)

This is Day 2 of my Korea Trip 2018.

Okay, so I’ll skip the ride from the airport to the hotel and just jump right into the breakfast the following morning. But I did recap a bit about the bus ride here. (Yes, that’s a different site that I write on, and I didn’t want to repeat too much of the same information here.)

Anyway, for part of my stay in Korea, I was at the Center Mark Hotel, and its breakfast room (as can be seen in the photo below) is called The Kitchen Restaurant.

I was given vouchers for breakfast when I checked in the night before (there is a fee for breakfast, but the price in my reservation for the hotel already included breakfast), so in the morning all I had to do was show up with one of those vouchers and then grab whatever I wanted in this buffet breakfast.

For my first round, I went with the salad stuff, plus egg, fries, and sausages. In the second round, I went with the traditional Korean dishes – specifically pork bulgogi and the traditional Korean side dishes that are served in Korean restaurants.

Myunchaeban (Incheon Airport)

Well, my first “stop” upon landing in Korea was the 7-Eleven store in the airport. My next one was Myunchaeban, located in Terminal 2 on the lower floor of the airport. (If you look closely, you will see the name in white letters located on the top right of the signage.)

When you enter, you are asked to wait to be seated (there aren’t much English signs in the restaurant, but at least that part is in English). A young lady led me to my table and handed me the menu.

I went with “lucky #13” Broiled Mackerel with Rice Set, and I didn’t know this but it came with Korean miso soup. (Apparently, I didn’t really look too hard at the picture on the menu….) Anyway, the lady brought the bill to my table right away, and since I did not know the Korean custom, I simply put the cash on the clipboard right away. (I didn’t realize until later that I should just take that with the payment to the front when I was ready to leave.)

Well, I had had a similar dish in Incheon four years earlier when I was on a business trip. Anyway, lots of bones, so I had to pick those out. But it was a nice meal, and a pleasant experience for sure.

As for utensils and napkins, there is this box/container on the side of the table with napkins and a little drawer where you can get these spoons and metal chopsticks.

It was a hot afternoon. After the meal, I went to the bus ticket booth and bought a ticket for the limousine bus that would take me to my hotel.

When I got on the bus at 5:30pm, it was still sunny… by the time the bus got to the hotel close to 8pm, it was dark…. (It had started to get dark by 7pm…)

To be continued…

Greetings from Seoul, Korea!

After not taking a vacation for a while, I recently took two…. The first was back on August 20-21, when I was in Los Angeles as a guest for Fred Claire’s charity golf event, and the second is now in Korea.

Incheon Airport (ICN)

So, yes, I’m writing from Korea, where I will have plenty of free time to write down my thoughts. Previously, I’d been to restaurants weekly but never had much time to recap those visits. Now, in Korea, I will definitely have the time to do so for this particular trip.

The fight was essentially 12 hours, and that was a lot of time to kill. I ended up watching a documentary about the 1985 Chicago Bears, two episodes of Elementary (Season 5), and two episodes of Hawaii Five-0 (Season 8). And I listened to music on the plane. There was ice cream, a beef meal, snacks, and so on to keep us passengers fed.

Season 8, Episode 2 of Hawaii Five-0

Finally, when the plane arrived in Incheon (ICN), and I got through customs, it was time to get a little beverage… ahhhh the 7-Eleven store in the airport had Mountain Dew! Except… the Mountain Dew in Korea seems to be a bit… sour. Not sweet at all.

And oh… by the way, it was Sunday afternoon (just after 4pm – on September 9th, 2018) in Korea… and according to the information I had, it was a one-hour bus ride from ICN to my hotel. (It turned out to be two hours, actually… probably due to the Sunday afternoon traffic.)

Before catching the limousine bus to the hotel, though, I figured, it was early. Might as well grab something to eat at the airport. Ahhhh… by the time I got to the hotel, it would be almost 8pm….

To be continued…

Aladdin Cafe (Vancouver)

On a Friday afternoon, AJ and I wanted to grab something quick for lunch. We decided to try Aladdin Cafe on Robson and Seymour Street in downtown Vancouver.

I went with the Shawarma Plate, and what can I say? The pictures tell a thousand words… 🙂

I mean, the one other time I visited Aladdin, I wanted the fries that was advertised on their menu – but they didn’t have it because they’d just opened for that day and the fries wouldn’t be ready for while.

I ended up not getting anything that day, but the Shawarma Plate on this Friday afternoon was just what I needed.

Unfortunately, not everybody has had pleasant experiences here. The following is feedback left by a New Westminster (BC) resident on Yelp.ca from July 2018:

The food here was just okay. I found it a little overpriced, given the complete lack of ambiance and presentation. The Chicken Shawarma Arabi was better than the Lamb Shawarma Platter, and cheaper by a couple dollars, so I’d probably go with that if I came back.

Bizarrely, the man who served us would not provide us with tap water, and he charged us for bottled water even though my father didn’t say we’d buy any, which I found quite rude. I’m not sure I’ve ever been refused a cup of tap water before. Even the ultra-cheap places like Fresh Slice will give you a little styrofoam cup of it.

I don’t think we will be giving this place a second chance.

The person who left those comments gave Aladdin a one-star review. Yikes.