However, we spent our meal times at various other places. Here’s a little run-down, in chronological order, on some of the places where we ate.

1. Sanchon—Billed as featuring “Korean Temple Cooking,” Sanchon provides more than food. The dishes were, indeed, like those we had at a very nice place in Changwon that also featured temple cooking: fixed-menu vegetarian food with an extensive array of tiny dishes. Beyond the food, there’s a floor show of 7-8 acts that starts with the owner (we guessed) banging a gong and progresses through a series of traditional dances. Located in the Insa-dong area of Seoul, Sanchon is at the end of a twisty alley that barely shows on the tourist maps; we found it by something akin to dead reckoning (and my faltering recognition of Hangul); the business card includes a map, but the Web site navigation didn’t allow me to find one there. Our waitron was a young man who was very friendly and helpful. For other notes and more details, see (a) the Sanchon Web site; (b) Jason Truesdell’s entry (lots of photos); (c) Rob Kellerman’s entry; (d) an entry by Soon-Young (Peace of Rice); and (e) Christina’s review for Zofona.
2. Cafe Florentine—For a late breakfast, we had tea, coffee, fruit-juice blend, and breads at Cafe Florentine (if I’m remembering correctly; maybe “Cafe Florence?”). It’s a tiny place (room for ~12 to sit inside, packed tightly) that has a window onto the street behind the Dongwha building, just a few meters north of the Koreana Hotel. The food wasn’t particularly special, but the proprietresses were playing nifty tunes. Pat recognized a song by Eva Cassidy and asked; the proprietresses quickly grabbed the CD to show it to us and we chatted (they spoke some pretty good English) about those songs and other music they had (a very eclectic collection).
3. Unknown Hole-in-the-Wall Place—For lunch Thursday, we walked along the north side of Namdeamun Market past about 40-11 camera shops and stopped in a little place that had room for fewer than 20 seats. We asked (by pointing to a phrase in a tour book) if the place served vegetarian dishes and the waitron said, “Ne.” She showed us a few dishes, we ordered, and had a very good meal. In addiiton to the usual spread of little apetizer dishes (yes, including kimchee), there was (a) a bowl of large noodles (kalguksu) with a few small shellfish that had a very tasty broth and wasn’t spicy and (b) a seafood soup (bugeoguk?) with vegetables and spices. The total bill was less than $10! Very nice folks; the cooks came out of the kitchen and visited with us, conversing by pointing at foods and at the corresponding names for them in our guide book.
4. Mezzaluna—Two floors below the Seoul Finance Center, Mezzaluna is a Korean take on Italian food. It has white table clothes, cloth napkins, and western utensils. Pat wondered if the fruit in the fruit salad was canned. A mozarella pizza had its advertised thin crust and lots of cheese with leaves of basil neatly arranged on each slice. The zuppa del dia was billed as brocoli cream, but it included chicken. The grilled salmon came with a half dozen pieces of different vegetables, all covered in a light cream sauce.

Before we’d gotten here, we’d heard that there were college students planning to meet in Seoul and protest. What’s the issue? Well, these were—get this!—special education students who were upset that Korea’s new laws about special education permit people from other disciplines (e.g., occupational therapy) to have the same level of licensure as special education teachers. So, we understood, students were going to protest the lessening of teachers’ status. Well, that was enough for Pat.

As we returned from lunch, we saw police forces getting off busses and donning flack jackets and preparing shields. They were coming off busses in droves. There were scores of busses. Pat watched from our hotel window, which overlooked some of the streets where the police busses were arrayed nose to tail with another row of busses overlapping the crack between the nose-and-tail position of the others, in brick-like fashion. Pat couldn’t resist. “I’m going out,” she said.

She got a couple of photos and came back to report a couple of times. She convinced the two young police officers in the top shot to pose for her. And she found that the police had cordoned off an entire main street in the Gwanywhamun area (as shown here; looking east from near the Gwanywhamun Gate, notice the Chongro Tower Building in the background).

As it turned out, it wasn’t the special education students. These were farmers who descended on Seoul to protest the US-RoK free-trade agreement. They had erected a stage and assembled people to demonstrate their concerns. She said the crowd went much farther along the street than this photo shows; it’s from just to the right of the stage. This is a wide street, so there were lots of people. Pat reported that a group of them (not shown here) were carrying petitions and, she surmised, hoping to deliver them to the US Embassy (this neighborhood is thick with Embassies).

So what if it wasn’t about special education? Pat was out there.

As we were about to leave, a young woman (Sally Kim, we think) came to the entry to the gallery and spoke with us in excellent English. She explained that the man with whom we’d spoken was one of the artists. Pat asked about her favorite fan in the show, and it turned out to be the work of the man hosting the show. He is Park Woo Yeoul and Mr. Park offered to pose with us at the fan Pat liked. So that’s how we came by this photo.

Ms. Kim explained that she’d studied eduation at SUNY Pottsdam and was in Changwon tutoring English. She passed on her e-mail address so that we could send Mr. Park a copy of the photo. I’ve sent it to Ms. Kim.