A Trip to E-Mart

Last weekend we filled our Saturday by taking a trip to Tongyeong (just over the bridge from Geoje Island, on the mainland) to go to E-mart.  For those of you who have never been to a Korean discount department store, here's a firsthand account.

The store usually opens mid-morning, around 10, maybe 9 a.m. at the earliest.  This means there are two or three hours before noon, the witching hour when all activities in Korea become hopelessly mobbed.  Because the shopping carts have no fixed wheels, they become incredibly difficult to steer as they fill up, and navigating them through dense crowds of shoppers can be a challenge. We tried to get to E-mart early, but we were unsuccessful.  So we decided to try a special cart to entertain Sophie and hopefully escape cart steering problems:

Unfortunately, this cart was nearly impossible to steer, mostly because it now had toddler diving in and out of the car attachment repeatedly.  Still, we somehow managed to complete grocery shopping on the first floor of the store and make our way to the much more interesting second floor, where we purchased the best finds of the day:  the tea set for Sophie's Valentine's Day present, and a new shelf to hold the exponentially growing toy collection.

After we finished with our shopping spree, Keegan took Sophie to the play area while I paid for our purchases and took everything out to the car.  The play area was extensive, and Sophie had a blast, especially when she got to ride the train!

On the way back from the car, I noticed that the E-mart management has gone to great pains to make sure you really can do everything you could possibly want to do within their one-stop shopping experience.  For example:

You can buy a live pet!  Perhaps finding a dead pet would be more difficult...

You can participate in the Robot Club & Science Club!

You can start your courtship off right at the romantic Finance Cafe!

You can also eat lunch, which is what we did next.  We went downstairs to the large food court and got a huge lunch set.

After lunch, Sophie decided to commemorate our exciting trip to the department store with a few self portraits.  Here's her finest work:

We look forward to wiling away more hours at E-mart in the future, but hopefully not too soon....we need time for our wallets to recover.