Daegu

Daegu is the fourth largest city in Korea, and under two hours away from Ulsan. We had planned many times to go, but it never happened for various reasons. Finally, after six months of living so close, we made the short journey.

Snacking essentials for the train:

water, Fat Down and gimbap

Fat Down Power 6!

The sweetest name for a fiber drink!

The train platform

A man driving a scooter on the platform.
He just drove in, did a loop and left.
We couldn't make any sense of it.

We didn't actually try it. We're bad Seattleites

Seafood platters made of rice cake

The motel we stayed in was in the heart of the 약령시 (yak-ryeong-shi) area of Daegu, which has been the country's major retail center for medicinal herbs for several hundred years. Still today, almost half of all medicinal herbs purchased in South Korea come from here. This small grid of streets, lined with shops selling all sorts of dried things, fills the surrounding neighborhood with the thick, almost sickening scent of ginseng.

Andrew (undressing) in the dressing
room of a trendy Korean men's store

"I'm not wearing any pants!"

Clearly, acid washed Korean jeans are not easy to slip on.

Not United Colors of Benetton...
There are no copyright laws in South Korea, obviously.

Deagu has bars with TAKE OUT windows!

We may look like we are enjoying them, but
they were actually quite awful and we
threw them away shortly after the photo.

A Hello Kitty school supplies store

Soup: Performance Feminism Fashion!

Fila has underwear shops in South Korea!

These may, or may not be, the new Fila briefs that Andrew owns.

Pretty certain NONE of that stuff is Patagonia.

So lazy, in fact, they weren't open at 11:30 on a Sunday morning.

The large Korean characters say "Flower Shop,"
so we're not quite sure how they translated that into,
"Romantic Soul Lounge Bar."

And, from the looks of it, their poster girl
hasn't gotten romantic in quite some time.

Bus Bar! It's too bad we found it when it was closed...

Awful

Not sure what it could mean,

but it sounds delicious (and kind of sexy).

Burger No. 1 for the day
(We ate this one while we waited for Gorilla Burger to open)

This is a bar, we think.

A photo booth store. AMAZING!

They all had green screens so you could put
yourself into awesome scenes like these.
The only problem was that the instructions were
written in Japanese and spoken in Korean, so
we didn't have any clue what was going on.