Shinsegae

The Shinsegae is a block and a half from our apartment in Centum City. It is now the world's largest department store. I know this because of all the Guinness Book of World Record signs all over the Shinsegae stating that it's the world's largest department store. It's a pretty impressive facility. It has an ice skating rink, world food court, many restaurants, huge book store, high end stores that we can't afford to shop at, a golf driving range, grocery store, regular movie theater, Imax theater, a rooftop park overlooking the city and a massive spa with many naked people running around. Most importantly, they have a Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The Shinsegae is right next door to the Lotte Department Store mall, which is pretty impressive too. In these tough economic times, you can't have enough luxury department stores.

To give you an idea of how huge the Shinsegae is, here is a picture of one of the bathrooms. Just kidding. This is a closet.

Carol likes to walk to the Shinsegae to grab a bagel and cream cheese at the Au Bon Pain bakery. They are so friendly in there. The manager usually gives the boys a free bread stick or snack during their visits. I think it's cause Carol shows him a little leg.

Lots of Greek statues in the Shinsegae lobby area. Great place for a toga party.

We interrupt this blog post for a quick toga party flashback.

Outside of the grocery store area is a long line of herbs, roots, mushrooms, tree trunks, twigs, powders and other natural things that are "good for health." This is a very popular Korean saying - "good for health."

The Shinsegae is so massive, you can have actual airplane dogfights inside the building. If you blow the picture up, you can see the Guinness Book of World Records signs hanging on the balcony.

I needed a little help to figure out the food court. At first, I went directly to the food place to order food. Wrong. You have to go to the main counter and tell them the number of the dish you'd like to order. I had a Sanford and Son flashback standing in front of the restaurant with no one helping me. "You Big Dummy!"

So after you order your food from the main counter, you look at this digital board and wait for your number to come up. Wow, that sounded kinda fatalistic.

They have a kiddie play area too. I imagine this is what the spa is like except everyone is naked.

Koreans take physical health very seriously. Notice the mouth covering thing these food handlers wear. I'm thinking of buying a couple of these contraptions as Christmas presents for those friends who have that "say it, don't spray it" problem.

Simple yet effective. These watermelon holders make lugging fruit home so much easier from the Shinsegae.

There's a very cool ice cream/gelato place at the Shinsegae that we like. You can get three flavors of ice cream in one cup for pretty cheap. The place is called Gusttimo. I would've taken a picture of all the colorful ice creams but I got shut down by the ice cream workers. Guess it's top secret kinda stuff. I felt like I just had my Soup Nazi experience from Seinfeld.

Anyway, there's our stroll through the Shinsegae. Until next time -- C2