Our Weekend: Monster Cupcakes and Tim Burton

Train journeys are always fun when you have red wine and The Walking Dead to make it go faster. I'm a couple of episodes behind on the third season, and think that it's definitely the best season so far, what does everyone else think?

Saturday was really sunny and warm, so we strolled around Hongdae, got some lunch then headed to the Tim Burton exhibition and the Seoul Museum of Art. It was amazing. It shows pictures, videos and notes from when he was really young, up until his big blockbuster films. It was so interesting to see which ideas that he developed all those years that you can see influenced some of the characters in his movies that everybody loves now-a-days.

Feeling weary we headed to Edae to the Raintree Cafe that I had seen mentioned on Cute in Korea. We ordered some juice and a huge banana and walnut pancake that came with green tea ice cream, exactly what we needed to get our energy levels back up, just in time to meet our friends.

We went for dinner in Itaewon and went to a Speakeasy bar. Being a massive fan of Boardwalk Empire, I was really excited about this. There was a small eye slit cut into the door, and when the light's on, you're allowed to knock and see if they'll let you in. Luckily we got in. It was really dimly lit with candlelight, there was jazz music playing and hundreds and hundreds of bottles of whiskey lined the walls. Not being a big whiskey fan, I had an amaretto sour, then decided to be brave and try a whiskey sour. The bar guy, who told us his English name was Rocky insisted that adding an egg white to a sour drink made it better, and i have to say it was really tasty.

The next morning we met near Itaewon for brunch and I tried Eggs Benedict for the first time. It was so nice being able to get a really good Western breakfast eating out, something that is pretty rare in Busan. After this we went to the Monster Cupcake shop. I was completely spoilt for choice, all of the cupcakes were decorated amazingly, and the owner's cute little son was sat in the shop, munching on a severed finger, that was actually made out of biscuit. I went for the lemon cupcake decorated with an eyeball, and Nick took a coffee one with the chopped finger.

With just a few hours before our train, we decided to visit the Hanbok village. This is an area that has lots of well maintained traditional Korean housing. It was really nice to take a wander around, and the peaceful atmosphere really reminded me of Kyoto. After exploring the tiny winding streets, we came to the main road where there are lots of traditional tea houses, we sat outside in the sun and enjoyed our cupcakes and took a stroll through the park, back to the metro.

We ended our trip on a high note, after finding a shop that sold turd shaped cakes, which we couldn't resist! They tasted a lot better than they looked.

It was such a nice, relaxing weekend, and was great to discover a bit more of Seoul.