The Green Bean : Cafe

Okay.

I mentioned before that, after 3 months (or was it 4?) I finally realized that there are many amazing places in Dongtan. Being alone around here, and never pushing myself long enough to walk around and risk getting lost, I had never ventured on the other side of what is called "Central Park" (pretentious name ? Yah. I also think so) and gotten to that amazing layout of small streets filled with coffee shops and clothes stores. I actually never even got to the part of the "green" of Dongtan that is called Central Park. It's a huge park that has a lot of small rivers and places to sit, trails in little tree shades, tennis and badminton courts, soccer fields, rollerblade park, climbing walls, kids parks fountains... What the hell was I doing avoiding that spot for so long. 

Anyways. 

In the end I got past the green spot. And ended up in a Green Bean :)

So here we are, I'll give you one of the promised coffee shop reviews I never took the time to write.

I know I should just get expressos when I order a coffee for the first time, as that's really the only way to tell if a coffee is good or not, especially when they burn their own beans, but I always get a capuccino when I try a new coffee shop. Since it's the summer, and thus, freaking hot outside, they always look at me weird when I ask them for a hot one. I take ice capuccino only when I am in vacation, so hot it is. I also asked for sugar (the little liquid thingy besides my cup) in case it's bad. If it's bad, then sugar always makes it taste decent.

I did not use the sugar.

The Green Bean has good coffee. They also serve Haagen Daaz ice cream with their homemade waffles, but the waffle would only get a 5/10. It's not bad. It's just that I had so much better in Sanbon. I am becoming pretty picky with waffles since I'm here.

I love the roof of this coffee shop. In Sanbon, there were a lot of coffee shops, but they were mostly very tiny stores rectangular in shape with this small-places-atmosphere that I liked. The main difference with Sanbon, appart from the fact that there is LITERALLY one coffee shop beside the other, beside the other, beside the other....., is the size of the places. They usually occupy a pretty big space and I noticed that a lot of them even have a half/second floor with low tables where you crawl-in and sit after taking off your shoes. I'll update about other coffee shops soon if I take the time. I tend to be lazy. 

The place had a terrasse with parasols (so when it gets slightly cooler I'll probably have my coffee outside when I go back) and a very high ceiling with wooden planks spread out on it to give the room a warmer feel. 

The only thing I could really do without was the fact that 99% of the people that got there after me (the 1% being me) were families with noisy kids that did not really make me feel at peace to write my blog or my letters as was my original plan. Well that's the thing about Dongtan, all the people that ended up living here are families with kids and the dad working for Samsung.

Like a lot of Korean cafés, the toilets are in the same building but you need to get outside to get to them. Which is both inconvenient in the winter because it's cold and in the summer because it's hot. Outside toilets, because they are usually shared, are also a bit less clean than their in-the-cafe counterparts. Nevertheless, the toilets in The Green Bean were not so bad. Had me walk past a handsome man writing on his notebook on the terrasse.

Most shared toilets in Korea have the same guidelines: do not throw the paper in the toilet, because it'll explode and you'll be covered in poop... eh yah. Not really but the fear is still there. They also usually have the "please don't smoke" sign. This time, however, I liked the message for non-smoking. I felt like it would touch a bit more directly most of the people in Dongtan: "Please refrain a little, our kids also use this toilet space." I felt like it was exactly the kind of message that could get those mothers to care enough.