One thing that we really wanted to do while we are here was go to a 'Dinner Show.' It's a typically tourist thing to do in Korea. You eat traditional Korean food and watch a dancing show. I think that most of the time it is Korean traditional dancing. Unfortunately things didn't quite pan out the way we had planned......
I had trudged through the internet information about Dinner Show's and found that there are several places in Seoul that we could go. Our ECC boss Michael was kind enough to make the booking for us for Saturday night (25th March) under Mr Yu's name(the big boss). Eek!
Clare and I joined Julia and Kelly on their trip to Seoul before the dinner show. Clare wanted to go to the english book store with Julia and I decided that I would help Kelly in her camera buying mission at Yongsan.
The camera buying went great by the way. Kelly bought a camera identical to the one we have for a slightly better price. The salesman was eyeing her up for his girlfriend quite obviously so gave her a good deal!
Prior to the dinner we spent a little time in Insa Dong. It is a market filled with stalls and shops that sell all kinds of arts and crafts like beautiful chests, lights or just nic nacs. There was also a gallery with some stunning paintings and sculptures. I will definitely go back once I get a full pay cheque!
Insa Dong is on the way towards Anguk Station which apparently is on the way to the Dinner Show. As we made our way there we managed to lose Julia and Rachel on the way as they succumbed to the call of a massage. Meanwhile the rest of us bumbled our way towards the Dinner Show, at least we thought we were going in the right direction....
First up we started walking from the wrong entrance of the station so were in the wrong direction. Then a woman we asked on the street recommended that we take a taxi to the Dinner Show as it was a long way. We jumped in a cab and tried to give the driver the address of the restaurant while he drove in the opposite direction. He didn't understand our instructions so I had the ingenious idea of calling the restaurant and making them talk to the taxi driver.
The taxi driver had a very heated conversation with the restaurant people and drove us for about 10 minutes in a complete circle so that we were back where we started walking! He took our 6000 won fare and he started to get out of the cab. I thought - excellent he must be walking us to the restaurant and we all hopped out. Mr Taxi had other ideas. He pointed to the pavement and said "Wait a moment." got back in his cab with another fare and then drove off.
We were bemused - what are we waiting for? I thought perhaps, the restaurant people were coming to get us and so we waited for about 10 minutes. By this time it was well past the time that we had to be at the restaurant and we were all a bit hungry and frustrated. Julia and Rachel were about to join us and so we aborted the Dinner Show plan and scouted around Insa Dong for some where to eat.
We lucked out in finding a really good Italian restaurant. We drank Australian wine from huge shiny glasses, what a treat! My meal was excellent and the restaurant decor was goregeous. We almost felt like we were outside of Korea. Even outside the restaurant there were fairy lights all over the trees as you can see in the photo.
Our boss Michael was not impressed that we didn't turn up to the dinner show despite our explainations about how hard we tried to get there. I guess we won't be asking him to book us into restaurants in the future.
I still hope that we get to see a dinner show but still I wouldn't have missed our great italian night for anything.
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