'一日'

In the mood for single malts, we avoided ritzy Gangnam-gu (stop with the Gangnam-style jokes okay. We haven't even made one mention of it) and all its swanky bars, and went to a tiny little bar on the second floor located in a residential district in Jongno-gu. Cramped. Enough to seat 16 plus 2 servers. We fit right in.

Now, the name of this bar. Very cool. The bar used 'hancha' (which is the Chinese characters in Korean language) for its name- '一日'. In Korean 'hangul', it's '일일' (pronounced 'il-il'), meaning 'one day', reflecting the exact meaning in Chinese. In Japanese it's pronounced as 'ichi-nichi', which means an identical 'one day' or 'full day'. Most interesting.

Lots of drams of Oban 14y.o flowed, along with Laphroaig Quarter Cask. Plenty of dirty martinis with Hendrick's joined the party too. The bar served up a tantalizing bowl of homemade pickles, then dried nuts and fruit. It wasn't like crazy drinking. More like slow sips. But I guess we really could drink a lot, and before we knew it, we had 5 rounds. Time flew by and it was 3am by the time we left the bar. Quite typical of every other night in Seoul. :P