Meerkats & More!

 They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Well this one is worth a thousand LAUGHS!

Let me introduce you to the Meerkat Cafe!!!

I would definitely say one of our favorite memories from living in Korea last time was all of the fun animal cafes:  cat cafes, dog cafes, raccoon cafes (yes, you read that right!), sheep cafes, etc.  Well, in the six years we have been gone, the cafe scene his exploded.  We have so many more we need to visit!  

The only problem is most of them are in Seoul.  With Covid restrictions quite high right now, Seoul has been off limits to US military members.  At the last second one Saturday morning, they lifted the restrictions briefly, so we rushed up to Seoul while we could.  

And where was the first place we went?  The Meerkat Cafe of course!

The Meerkat Cafe is located in Hongdae -- one of the more trendy neighborhoods of Seoul.  There are multiple universities in the area, so the surrounding streets have a fun, youthful vibe to them.  Over the years, we have found some of our favorite activities in Hongdae.  

Like most places in Seoul, you have to navigate through several small alleyways to find it.  If you are looking for directions on Naver, search for Mieokaet Friends.

When you enter, they have a bunch of instructions to keep the animals (and yourself) safe.

After reading the instructions, paying the entrance fee, and sanitizing your hands, you are free to roam about the cafe.  Most of the animals are separated in small playpens, but a few of the just roam around.  Like this cute Wallaby...

He was so incredibly friendly!  

It's called Meerkat & Friends because there are other animals besides the meerkats.  Everything from raccoons, to arctic foxes, to genets.  It's pretty random, but that's what makes it so fun!

You could play with and hold a lot of the animals.  Here are a few...

The meerkats were by far our favorites though!  They keep them in a pretty large playpen, and before you are allowed to enter, they have you take EVERYTHING out of your pockets.  It seemed a little extreme until we started interacting with them.  They are not shy at all!  They immediately came to check us out.

One came right up and jumped in Emma's lap.

They were super curious.  It wasn't long before we were covered in meerkats!!!

They wanted to sniff and explore every part of us, including our pockets and down into our shorts!  That's the purpose of the blankets they gave us, to try to keep them out of our clothes.  But they are really quick little creatures.  And there were so many of them, we were constantly finding them crawling into some part of us!  

Here's Pete trying to keep his blanket closed to keep them out.

We definitely understood now why you can't have anything in your pockets.

We had so much fun with them!  They were just so incredibly friendly.

And that's when the meerkat selfies started...

I honestly cannot say enough about this little cafe.  It did not disappoint!  

On our way out, we walked by the sheep cafe, but didn't stop.  

By this time we were starving.  We headed over to one of our favorite restaurants in Seoul.

One thing I love about many Korean restaurants is they don't try to serve a bunch of different main dishes.  Some places will only serve one thing, and they cook that one item perfectly.  This is one of those restaurants.  I am pretty sure the sweet little ajumma who was working was the same lady who was here six years ago when we would eat here.  She doesn't speak any English, but we know enough Korean to order.  

Mmmmm...Jjimdak.  This is one of my absolute favorite Korean dishes.  It's like a sweet & spicy chicken stew.  I make it at home, but not nearly as well.  

It was every bit as good as we remembered.

Our last stop on was to Myeongdong.  This was always such a fun place for street food and shopping.  We wanted to show it to Emma since she doesn't remember it very well.  Sadly, Covid restrictions have turned it into a ghost town.  It was really hard to see Myeongdong like this.  It might be because we were there after 6pm, and the restrictions really tighten in the evenings, but so many shops and restaurants were closed up.  It seemed like we were some of the only people there.

It's stores like this that always made Myeongdong fun.  This is a jewelry shop that feels a lot like Olivander's Wand Shop from Harry Potter.  It is floor to ceiling jewelry.  

We had fun browsing the few stores that were open, but sadly, didn't get to enjoy any street food.

And speaking of ghost towns, we stopped by the old military base -- Yongsan.  It was sad to see it all overgrown and mostly closed.  

Emma had fun visiting her old school.  It's crazy how much she has grown up since the last time we lived there.

All in all, it was a fun day in Seoul!