Madeline in Korea: From the Aquarium to the Cat Cafe

Last Friday Jason and I once again headed off to Seoul. This time we decided to stay in a hostel for two nights instead of doing our usual day trip. I realized this might have been one of our last trips to the big city before we are done with Korea come August. Time is ticking fast! I bet we'll probably sneak in one more trip but we've become so used to visiting whenever we want on a Saturday that it will be strange to no longer just pop over on the bus.

We were stuck in Friday night traffic on the road from Wonju to Seoul and then once we arrived had to ride on a crowded subway for another 40 minutes or so. Our hostel was in Hongdae, a really hip young area right next to Hongik University, which is an art school. We checked in to our simple accommodations, a private room with two single beds and (thankfully!) an air conditioner. The location was great, the streets were bright and vibrant filled with cute boutiques and coffee shops. We wandered around some and settled on dinner at Dos Tacos. We though the Mexican food in Daegu had been good, Dos Tacos is definitely the best I've had in Korea! There was even cilantro and frozen margaritas to chow down on! After that we walked around some more, taking in all the bright lights, funky street art, throngs of eclectic young people and blaring music. We ended up at a bar we'd visited before and played some pool.

Cute shopping in Hongdae

The most depressed looking Garfield I've ever seen. Overworked to say the least.

Hongdae

Street food: pineapple on a stick

Saturday morning we woke up early so we could catch the subway and ride 45 minutes to the opposite side of Seoul. My last birthday gift for Jason was to take him to the Aquarium since he said he'd never been to one before. I did such a good job of keeping it a secret until he guessed it the night before! The aquarium is inside the huge COEX mall. We'd never visited the mall before but left wondering why not! The place was huge, with tons of stores and food and things to see, plus an IMAX theater. We had to walk all the way across the mall to find the Aquarium. I really enjoyed our visit. It was a small aquarium so it only took about two hours to get through, which was probably just enough time before we got bored. There were lots of little kids and US military families. My favorite thing we saw where the Clawed Sea Otters! They were so cute and so fast! I couldn't get a good picture of them. We also saw two manatees but they were just sitting in the bottom of their tank, apparently asleep. Of course there were lots of colorful fish, sting rays and sharks. It was a fun experience and I think Jason enjoyed it.

Jason's little helper. It was both of their first trips to the Aquarium, haha.

Jason with fish swimming in a circle

There are fish in the frig, next to my head on the right! Really! It was fish art.

A sample of "Dr. Fishy" treatment, little fish nibbling on my hands. I wanted to stand there until my hands were smooth but we moved on.

Its a sea otter, really! It's just too fast for my camera.

Don't feed the fish!

There's a sea horse hidden in there. Can you spot it?

CRAZY seahorse that looks like a plant! It was fascinating and kind of creepy for some reason. Jason looked at this and said, "now tell me there's no such thing as evolution!"

Party their path to avoid the shark. Cool picture.

Ahh we were eaten alive and were happy about it!

After our fun morning Jason and I split up. I went to meet Amber so we could visit a cat cafe and Jason went to the Seoul electronics market. I had read about this cafe called Gio Cat Cafe online months ago and Amber and I both wanted to visit but we just now got around to it. When I say it was a cat cafe, I mean that literally. In this cafe you pay 8,000 won to enter and sip on an iced coffee, surrounded by 30 live cats!!

We quite easily found the cafe, slipped off our shoes, donning slippers instead, and walked inside. We were met with the faint smell of cats, but that quickly went away. The place was small, like a normal coffee shop, and crowded. Even though there were no tables available at the moment (they were assigned) we were told we could still hang out on the floor and visit the cats. Apparently that's what everyone was doing, even if they had a table. There were girls and cats everywhere! Oh, and a few unfortunate boyfriends who were dragged in as well. Amber and I wondered why we couldn't just sit at one of the many empty tables but oh well. The whole experience was a bit bizarre... not quite as much fun as it initially sounded to me. (I was super thrilled to get to play with cats!!!) Perhaps that was because it typical cat fashion a lot of them would simply wander by or scamper away, or were sleeping. There were lots of spots for the cats to climb throughout the cafe, a fake tree, a cat tree, windows, benches, baskets. The only time a cat would really stop and sit with someone was if they were being fed. You could pay extra and buy treats for the cats and then they would be all over you. A few girls did this and they were covered in greedy cats, who would promptly abandon them after the treats were gone. A few cats were asleep in some peoples laps, that's all I wanted. But you weren't allowed to pick up the cats, which I think also made it a little less fun that it could have been. Finally Amber and I did get a seat and our coffee. That was much nicer. Some cats stood on our table and hung around us even though we didn't have any food, which was nice. One crazy cat kept trying to eat Amber's hair!! He chewed on her bun about three times. We stayed for a little over an hour and then left as Amber is allergic to cats and was staring to react. All in all it was still a really fun, strange, thing to do that I'm glad I can cross off my list! Who would have thought such a place would really exist! I guess its Korea's answer to not having a pet in your private residence. A lot of Koreans are afraid of cats too, so this seems a new trend.

This is what we saw when we first entered Gio Cat Cafe. Utter chaos.

That's not his latte. So chic, isn't he?

Does he have eyes?! I don't know!

Employees

Lazy dayz

She had treats so she was mobbed. The lady on the right was super pushy.

We finally got a table.

Attacking Amber's hair!

The girls just couldn't get enough

After our little outing we met back up with Jason and ran into a few of our other friends. Our primary reason for going to Seoul on Saturday night was to see our friend Shannon's art show. She is also an English teacher in Wonju who went to school for art in Kansas. She become friends with a Korean woman connected to the art world of Seoul who told her she could set up a show for Shannon in a local Hongdae coffee shop. Before the show Amber, Jason and I ate (again!) at Dos Tacos, it was just so good! We then met everyone else at the coffee shop around 8pm. Shannon's art is part performance, body art, public art, photography and video. We had some wine and coffee (what a mix!) and enjoyed watching her videos and viewing her photographs. I would like to talk to her more in person about her work but I didn't have much time that night. I was very impressed with her though, especially her willingness to show her friends her work! We thought she was so brave, to expose herself like that! She made one video about her first months in Korea and her attempts at learning hangul (the Korean alphabet) that was really great, I totally related to it.