Celebrating one of the biggest holidays in Korea second only to Chuseok. Seollal (lunar new year). Korea used to follow the lunar calendar which has a different system than the solar calendar now widely accepted. New years this year fell on the 1st of February. Year of the Tiger!
Most businesses are closed because Koreans are visiting family and traveling over the three-day holiday. Even the convinces stores were closed, and I never have seen them closed before!
On the 1st I went with two friends to eat dim sum, small Chinese cuisine, and dumplings. We found a place inside the COEX mall, one of the biggest in Korea. The mall was open normally since it was mainly franchised. WOWWOWOWO it was super delicious food. We started off with some jasmine tea (and I think I drank like 5 cups of it) and then arrived at the pork and shrimp dumplings, definitely good but not the highlight of the day. We then for the eggplant rolls (discovered my love for eggplant a year or so ago but rarely have it) that we super juicy and soup dumplings. Well, soup dumplings are made by freezing broth overnight, then placing it in the dumpling with meat and filling, and then steaming it so that it's warm and delicious inside. What a genius culinary masterpiece. You drink the soup from the dumplings then eat the moist inside. We ordered three plates of these! Then we had some roast duck over noodles and let me say I think this duck was some of the best meat I have ever had. The seasonings were amazing, the skin was crunchy, and it was so juicy!! My mouth is watering now.
After a giggling dinner, we walked through the mall for a while and ended up in a bookstore! There were very few foreign books here but I found special editions of Harry Potter that were colored like a respective Hogwarts house. I almost spent all my money but decided against it for the time being. My friend was approached by a random Korean man so we decided to save her and leave the bookstore emptyhanded ):
To wrap up the evening festivities we all talked and got some amazing waffles. I was eating chocolate overload and again my mouth is watering right now. Sadly my budget for the day ended up being about 27,000 krw. Not too bad for a celebration day!