A Colorful Weekend in Colorful Daegu

This weekend we decided to stay in town and simply enjoy our surroundings a bit, and try to get a bit more familiar with more of the food options available to those of us lucky enough to live in Daegu. Friday after work found us heading downtown. I met Babehoney at a Davinci Coffee shop in the Jungangno underground shopping plaza and we headed up to the street level to find something interesting to eat. We did a complete circle starting at Gorilla Burger looking for something that would pique our culinary curiousity (we decided on Turkish Kebabs and forgot about them during our circle) but ended up back at the Gorilla Burger. I had the Hawaiian Burger and it tastes JUST LIKE a teriyaki burger I would have had when I lived in Kona. I like their fries too, because they serve them with ranch dressing. Not something you see too often here. The walls are decorated with velvet painting renditions of Abraham Lincoln, President Obama, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and a few others. All in all I'd give Gorilla Burger a 9/10 because it's a really good American style burger at a really decent price with cool ambiance.

After eating we stumbled upon the Dongseongno Festival where we watched some hip hop groups perform and a couple of singers. It was a cool thing to happen upon, and it made for a complete Friday evening. I typically find these kinds of festivals irritating, but this one was really well produced and the weather was perfect for watching something like this. A quick stop at the Kyobo bookstore to look for travel guides (for our upcoming vacation in August) and we were on our way home.

Saturday we cleaned the apartment up really well and then once again made our way downtown. We remembered that we had forgotten to get kebabs so we made our way over and had a couple of them at the Turkish place. I'm kinda surprised at how many Turks live in Korea, but it's a good thing they do because I imagine that otherwise it'd be damn near impossible to find Mediterranean food. The kebabs were pretty good, but I think I prefer the Greek gyros a bit better. I had lamb and Babehoney had chicken. Once again a very inexpensive meal, but cool nonetheless. I'll give the Kebab place a 7/10 good meal, good price, but not super amazing.

After lunch we made our way to the CGV and got tickets to see Source Code. I thought the movie was really good. Usually I don't like those "you figure it out" kind of movies, but this one was pretty good. I especially liked the ending because it jived with what little I know of quantum physics and made for a good warm fuzzy feeling. We made our way home and picked up a box of fried chicken and cheesesticks from the BBQ Chicken. I think the delivery driver/cashier/owner guy was impressed with my upgraded (barely) Korean from the last time I was there. Definitely the best fried chicken evar. The rest of the evening we spent watching movies in bed.

Today we woke up at about 9:30, cleaned the hamster cages, had a light lunch of a tuna sammich (by the way, if you're out of mayo and you have cream cheese in the fridge...it works...) and made our way to the Daegu National Museum to see the National Geographic photo exhibit they have right now. Actually, today was the last day. The photos were amazing, and the exhibit itself was really attractive. It was very crowded and here in Asia there's less personal space, so it was a bit uncomfortable, but definitely worth all of the queuing we did to see the photos. We took a quick lap through the permanent collection, mostly old bronze and iron tools and weapons, some armor, Buddha statues, and a miniature Confucian academy, and headed back downtown. When we got downtown we decided to try a place we spotted on our aforementioned lap of downtown and walked over to Italy Italy. I was excited to see things like farfalle, fettuccine, alfredo, bolognese, and other non-spaghetti Italian style pastas on the menu. I was even more excited when the first forkful of my fettuccine/farfalle alfredo was real alfredo sauce and not "cream sauce spaghetti" like you can find anywhere else. It was awesome, and not too expensive at all. Worth every single of the 12,000 won we each spent on dinner.

This weekend was so productive, and we're really happy to know that we can now easily access the following comfort food categories: Mexican, Mediterranean, Italian, and good old American burgers. The past two weekends of exploring Daegu have been fairly calm compared to our trips to Seoul, but certainly they have made the city seem a bit less backwater (how can a city of 2.4 million people feel like a backwater? ...compare it to a city of 20 million!) and full of conveniences we didn't know were even here (oh yeah, we found a TGIFridays downtown too...in the Lotte Department store.)

I'll see if I can add some videos to this post at a later time...uploading to US based websites like blogger takes forever on our internet connection and it's time for bed.