Café MARO (Seoul – Hapjeong)

Here’s a café where when I saw the name I thought “MARO? Which one was that?” But when I looked at my pictures I totally remembered. It was a nice place! and it recalls a time for me when I often visited the neighborhood it was in, Hapjeong. In the early 2010s, Hapjeong still felt kind of like a distant neighbor to Hongdae. It was just beginning to be trendy; its side streets still had a lot of hidden secrets to be discovered. Even on its main pedestrian street, though, there were two great cafés. Café MARO was one of them.

ONE & SIX (Seoul – Samseong-dong)

Good afternoon! Or good morning or good evening or good night. Today’s café’s name embraces the duality of my blog, the possibility of conversations in different time zones, the Sea and the Seo. Or maybe I’m just looking for profundity where there is none. In any case, I only visited this café one, and not six, times.

café LUA (Bucheon)

A little digging through the archives of the Internet was required for this post. Fortunately, I didn’t reach the end. That seems exponentially and infinitely impossible by now. But this post will introduce something previously seemingly impossible to this blog. The first one star review.

Coffee Brown (Seoul – Hongdae)

Oops. File this one under:
“Took picture. Forgot to go.”

coffee uriBan (Yongin)

For today’s post I will introduce you to… ah wait… we will check out another lightly visited place. We are doing this blogging thing collectively, right? It feels more intimate that way. Because today’s place highlights the our, the uri, the 우리, so prevalent in Korean culture. We are checking out coffee uriBan, or 커피 우리반, which was a chill café in the Dongbaek neighborhood of Yongin.

owel-e (Jukjeon café street)

Here we have another café whose existence has almost been lost in the sands of time. I seem to have only visited there once. And I could only find one link about it on the Internet. Well, the English language Internet, at least. This café was owel-e, in the Jukjeon café street. I almost didn’t write about it, but it’s good to post for posterity, and in looking at the picture I took there, I see it had a connection to a famous café.

coffee boca (Yongin)

The chronicles continue with another short review similar to the previous one. In this case, a place I barely remember going to, but with a person who I’m absolutely in contact with, my dear 형 who I’ve mentioned many times. When I saw the name “coffee boca” on my list of future reviews, I thought, ah, it’s another forgotten place like Möbssie. But no! Once I looked up its pictures, fond memories of delicious coffees and deep conversations welled up in my consciousness. Just, I went there so few times that the name was forgotten. But not the flavors or the feelings that coffee boca fostered in me.

Möbssie (Seoul – Hongdae)

A place I don’t even remember going to, with a person who I’m not even in contact with anymore. How do I review such a place? Keep it short, simple, and sweet! Because, well, it was a sweet place, after all. The place is Mobshi. Ehm, hmmm, I can’t seem to find any trace of Mobshi on the Internet.

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Cafés in Lima, Perú

Let’s try something a little different, shall we?

That something is another small tangent in my life. Though this blog is about coffee in and around Seoul with a dash of Seattle, it’s fun to sprinkle in the rest of the world when the moment arises. And this small tangent is a trip to Perú!

I’m here for a few weeks for a cousin’s wedding. And while the wedding was sweet and the party was fantastic, those adventures with a dancing bull and a dancing cuy are sadly beyond the scope of this blog. My deepest apologies.

But! The café culture here in Perú, specifically Lima, is something I’d like to cover in this post, at least in a brief bird’s eye overview.

Ding Dong Traveler’s Café (Seoul – Hongdae)

Turns out my next planned post was a perfect segue, a seamless transition, from my previous post. For it’s Ding Dong, the Traveler’s Café. Even though it’s over 12 years since I visited there, time and space are all seamless in memory and in cyberspace. My previous post had the ups and downs represented by musical notes, and this post, ding dong!, references my lifelong love of travel.