Lake Chungju...a man made lake in the middle of korea...there aren't many lakes here, so it was nice to see...kim and i started our saturday morning early, meeting up at a bus station in seoul...not entirely surprisingly, i was running late, so she bought the tickets for the next bus, and i got there about five minutes before it left...we arrived in chungju faster than expected, and kim and i were both hungry, so while waiting for our friend heather to pick us up, kim and i went hunting for kimchi dumplings (김치만두)...we found them at a typically small korean restaurant...soooooooo good!! and sooooooooo many!!! AND, they were homemade...the weekend was already looking grand:)
After eating we made our way back to the bus station, meeting up with Heather, who had brought along her friend April. Kim and i have known heather since the two of them worked together in 2007...heather now lives outside of seoul, teaches at a university, and has her own car!! woo hoo...heather having her own car allowed this entire weekend to happen...
our first stop was simply to look at the maps we'd picked up, and figure out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do...that's when these first few photos were taken, i couldn't get enough of the brightly coloured flowers:)
making our decisions took a little while, partly because we were also catching up with each other, and kim and i were talking to april for the first time...(april also lives outside seoul, and also teaches at a university, though a different one from heather)...we decided to drive to the ferry terminal, and see what we could figure out in terms of a tourist ride...unfortunately, the next ride would've involved waiting over an hour, which we didn't want to do..so, this is the ferry we would've taken:)
instead we drove back around the way we had come, stopping at this monument...i'm not entirely sure who it honours, but i love monuments, and with the awesome blue sky, how could i not take the photo?!?!
close to this monument we found a lookout sort of area, it was probably built as part of the damn...walking out little way is beautiful, so of course i did the shallow thing and had my photo taken:)
since our ferry ride didn't work out, we decided to drive to a nearby national park and do a little bit of hiking...and we decided to take the scenic route...heather had a decent idea of where we were going, so the gps in her car had to reroute itself a couple times...howeva, at one point we ended up on a very very narrow road, one that probably wasn't meant to be used very often...and when i say narrow, i mean really narrow...at times it was just barely big enough for the car...needless to say, the road wasn't paved, and had big holes and rocks, so we weren't entirely sure whether we would make it back to a sealed road w/out some sort of car trouble...this is the road!!
notice how skinny that road is!!! even though we probably shouldn't have been on this road, we still had fun with it...heather kept apologizing to the rest of us, we just laughed it off...somehow or another, the gps still recognized the road!! a couple times we passed other vehicles (not very easily) and the looks on the faces of those drivers were priceless...they were shocked to see another car, and they were even more shocked when they realized it was a car full of foreign girls...hee hee...that road took us over a pass providing sweet views like this one...sure, we went where no foreigner had gone before, but i'm pretty sure no other foreigner has seen this view either:)
the road took us into an agricultural area, we noticed a whole LOT of apple trees...kim and i couldn't resist this picture:)
notice how the trees in the background have bags on each of the apples, while this one is "unbagged"...we figured it must have something to do with speeding up the ripening of the apples, and this tree had just been checked to see if the apples were ready...this photo doesn't show nearly how awesome those apples looked...amazing...
tons of food in korea is made with a spicy paste, though these chili peppers are the first i'd seen being grown in korea...
after driving for a while longer, we FINALLY got onto a sealed road...it took us around this corner of the lake, which we thought was gorgeous...
this seemed to be an area looking down on the lake a bit...when we walked up a little we could see quite a ways over the lake...the photo doesn't show how much we could see, because i couldn't figure out a way to prop up the camera closer to the edge...as it was, to get this photo, i climbed up on the car (heather said she didn't car!) and set up the mini tripod, directing the girls "take two steps left, nooo, move back that way, etc"...they laughed, but did what i said...at one point, while i was on the car, another car drove the other way, and we kept laughing at the looks on the faces of those in the other car...they must've thought i was crazy:)
after driving around for quite a while, we realized we hadn't found the part of the national park where we wanted to hike...argh...but we were really hungry, so that became our next adventure...trying to find food wasn't as easy as we thought it would be...to be fair, it was 1530, not exactly a common eating time...in the end, the four of us had dwinjungjiggae (된장지개) a yummy soup...served with lovely side dishes, it hit the spot...our parking spot was near this stream:)
in the parking lot was a tree already well on it's way to dropping it's leaves, and i loved the redness of the leaves...
since the hike didn't work out either, we decided to drive to suanbo (수안보) to try out their famous hot springs...(famous in korea anywho)...heather had heard of a hotel that had an outdoor hot pool so that's where we headed...we sat in the water long enough to be well and truly pickled, and it was wonderful...soooo relaxing...plus, there was a giant shower room, with shampoo and conditioner provided, so we were all super clean afterward as well...i would love to go back there in winter, when it's snowing...we were there while the sun went down, so just before leaving i took this photo of the city at night...
after the hot springs we drove april back to her flat, about 20 minutes away from heathers place...heather lives in a lovely 2 bedroom flat, and had said kim and i could stay the night...heather wanted to clean up a little bit, so heather and i went to a nearby family mart and picked up a couple snacks...heather had gotten out an air mattress by the time we got back, so it didn't take us long to get ready for sleep...even though we hadn't been super active during the day, we still felt like it was a day in which we had seen quite a bit, so we were all tired...kim and i didn't take long to fall asleep...kim is short, so she took the couch...i had the air mattress, and i'm pretty sure i hardly moved during the night:)
The next morning we got up slowly, and had breakfast slowly...chitchatting about anything and everything the whole time, as women do:)...kim and i packed up all our stuff, and heather gave us a little tour around jochiwon...near this temple is the mountain spring where heather gets her water...
these tombs are from the baekje dynasty...
in jochiwon there is a small reservoir, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to drive around the whole thing...the weather was overcast the day we drove around, but it could be a lovely little spot, a great place to relax...
after driving around the lake, heather drove us to the train station...we got tickets for a train back to seoul, then went to two more places...one was a mart that sold lovely foods like chickpeas...i doubt many people would get as excited as i did, i'm such a dork...the next part was even better...a chocolate boutique!!! the chef/owner is korean, but lived in france for 10-15 years, training...so he knows his stuff...there wasn't a huge selection, but what was there was REALLY good...i REALLY want to go back!!!
then we got on the train, and rode back to seoul...a totally unexpected weekend, and i loved every minute of it..
1 comment:
Looks like you had a GREAT time!
You also took some stunning photos. When are you going to upgrade to a DSLR camera, like Cyclops?
Many hugs - miss ya!
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