Home Sweet Home, Part Two of Three
October 2nd, 2006.
Previously...
Keary and I had a great time running around town with Mary and company. He was sort of getting what kind of things I was telling him about; letting his hair down and having fun just going with the flow. Not everything in the world had to be planned out, the random and unknown had some benefits.
We found out I’d be flying out on the 3rd, and get home on the 4th, where before we thought it was just the 4th. That meant that we’d get one last day to do what we wanted. I wanted to be out on the street again, checking everything out that I possibly could.
And now...
Lunch at Don Valley’s was good. Hard to believe the food there was good all 24 hours that it was open. We stayed away from the sake, since it was just a bit after 1 in the afternoon. No need getting sodding smashed, at least not so early in the day anyway.
Keary and I also checked out the street vendors one last time, wondering if I had forgotten anything. We weren’t sure Gina would like the purse we got her, so one last look, to make sure. That girl had tastes that bordered on the overly flashy to overly ugly. Once we were sure that we were really good with our decision, back to the flat for us it was.
We spent the rest of the day talking about the future, about how we were going to make it our personal mission to go to Europe next year. Doable, but it would take very good timing. Lucky for the pair of us, I was decent at the timing thing.
And we also played a lot of poker. I was teaching him how to play Texas Hold ‘Em and 5 Card Stud (I tried to teach him Omaha, but did a particularly bad job of doing it). He was getting decent, and worried that he would have no one else to play cards with anymore. That got me thinking, and I began wishing that maybe in another time, another place, we’d be somewhat geographically close and able to hang out like we used to before I left home years ago. Different destinations, I guess.
It was around 7 or so when we got a call from Mary, who was up for joining us for a night on the town. We met up with her in Itaewon, and hit the King Club for some drinks with David, who had yet another new assistant bartender. He kept on changing them every few weeks or so. We all had shots together and we reminisced about the good times that we had there.
Later on we headed Downtown to another random bar, and watched the good people of the world walk on by while joking about how much America was tightly wound up sometimes. Mary told us stories about Toronto as well. Keary was in the mood to dance, so we found quite possibly the best club that I had ever seen in Seoul.
This place was on the top floor of some building, with a long line. Well, it wasn’t too long. Not really. It was the fact that there were a lot of stairs. And we know how I felt about stairs. The music inside reminded me of a Sunday night at I-Bar. 80’s music, stuff I hadn’t heard in months, since I arrived in South Korea. Mary and I tried to get Keary into the groove, which he quickly did, and we joined the rest of the crowd out on the dance floor. We ended up being the life of the party for a bit, but then the place got really crowded. It wasn’t the most spacious of places. It didn’t matter, because we were having way too much fun.
I don’t even know how long we were there, but we did get back to the flat sometime before the sun came up again. What a crazy night. A perfect end to a perfect adventure, even though I really didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want it to end. Honestly, if I didn’t have any obligations back in the States, I would’ve continued traveling. There was still so much to see out there, but there was much more time to check it out later on. I would be back out on the road once again; that much was certain.
Next: The long journey home. Super Jenn, Shawn, Mel, Sue, and a whole lot more as I adjust to being back from the road. That, and a whole lot of jet lag.