Garosugil or "tree lined street" in Sinsa-dong

as i write this i am sitting at a cute, european-style cafe in the Sinsa-dong neighborhood, on a side street of the famous Garosugil-also known as "tree lined street".  This cafe is so out of place in Seoul! This whole street is quite out of place, to be honest, it seems like it could be in Belguim or Paris, with it's scores of boutiques, fashionable couples strolling along, expensive cafes and trees! Yes, there are trees in Seoul, believe it or not. Alley Cafe has several little rooms with antique furniture and light fixtures, odd art and old advertisements adorn the walls, and they have bunny rabbits, too. we stumbled upon this place after taking an afternoon stroll with the goal of finding some new shoes (success.), and have decided to post up for a bit, enjoying the air conditioning and decent wine and tea.

this street, as i mentioned, is tree lined (unlike other streets in this city), reminding me somewhat of NW 23rd in Portland, only bigger, more crowded, and more expensive. We came with the goal of finding this store called Aland, a sort of Korean version of Urban Outfitters (to continue the NW 23rd theme). They had cool clothes and useless fashion items and Tom's shoes (our goal, the item which led us here), which Josh got a pair of, and I skipped, cause I have lots of shoes already. 

as we strolled along we noticed a Guinness promotion thing going on. a small shop decked out in guinness garb, we entered and a young guy in all black tried to explain to us in his broken english that we had to do some game/quiz then we'd get a free pint of beer! Okay... we tried, I tried. It was a funny experience all together, the young guy helping me out was so nice and he could say a few things in english, helping me cheat at the game... we laughed about it and went on our way to pour our own guinness! It was a throw back to my bar tending years, not so long ago. Another guy was telling me in great detail (in all Korean) how to pour the beer, and I was thinking: "yeah yeah, I know it, I've done this more times than I could tell you". The beer was delicious, and just what we needed to continue our trek through this pretty shaded street.