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Published: March 10th 2013
23rd Feb: A lovely late start today! We met up in Seoul around 2:30. Grabbed a coffee in Paris Baguette before heading off on the subway to Dong Seoul Bus Terminal. When we got off the subway we crossed over tot the bus terminal. We found the right counter to buy the tickets at. That took some searching as it meant reading all the different boards to find the right place. After we had purchased the tickets we had a bit of time as the bus wasn't leaving until half four.
Onto the bus, booted some wife out of our seats at the front. Cheeky mare, it's not like can't read that we are given seat numbers on our tickets. The journey took about an hour, maybe a bit longer. Luckily the traffic was good leaving Seoul, we sped the process up. It was nice to leave the city behind and get out into a bit more countryside. We could see the pretty snow covered mountains. The bus deposited us in Cheongpyeong, a small one street kind of town (so glad I don't live there). Then we hopped into a taxi and drove to the gardens. the drive took a
while and the fare was around 15-20,000 won. We got stuck in traffic at the top of a hill and the taxi driver told us to get out and walk the rest of the way. Bless him, because there were five of us we had taken two taxis and he radioed the other taxi to tell the driver to let the others out, too. Then it was a ten minute walk to the gardens.
The Garden of Morning Calm was thought of by Professor Han Sang-kyung, whilst he was serving as an exchange professor in the USA. His vision was to create a garden that would become world famous and show the Korean ideal of beauty. The garden is big, around 30,000 squared metres. It is one of the oldest private Korean gardens. The enterance fee was 7,000 won. Not too bad. The garden has different event going on depending on the season. In winter there are, what must be millions of, llights attached to the plants and trees and when dusk arrives they light up. We arrived a bit before sunset and hada little wander before the lights were turned on. There was a gallery that showed the
garden in the different seasons and it was nice to see what it would look like at different times of the year.
Once darkness had arrived the garden had been transformed. There were lights everywhere. It was a pretty amazing sight, and I hadn't seen anything like it before. We spent a good few hours wandering around the gardens. They are massive, taking lots of photos and we stopped in at the coffee shop for a coffe to warm up halfway through as it was freezing. It was the second last weekend that the gardens would have the winter lights on, so it was packed. but I think like almost all attractions in Korea, it would be packed every weekend.
After a good few hours in the gardens we left in search of dinner. We hiked to the small village next to the gardens. I say hiked because a lot of it was uphill. The first place we wantd to eat at was closed, bugger! But we found a lovely chicken galbi place and feasted on that with beer and soju. Then we got a taxi back into Cheongpyeong and the taxi driver dropped us off at a
hotel near the bus station. Well the hotel looked extremely sketchy and we got as far as the foyer, before turning and bolting out of the door. Our taxi driver saw us made us get back in and drove us literally round the corner to another hotel. This hotel was slightly better. We got an ondol room for 50k between the three of us. The room was freezing and we cranked the ondol up. We searched through through the telly for something to watch, but failed as there was nothing decent on. So we spread the bedding out on the floor and said goodnight.
24th Feb: An okay night's sleep. It took me ages to get to sleep and I dozed on and off a lot. We had a leisurely morning getting ready and drinking crappy coffee sticks. Then we went and met Mary, who'd stopped in the jjimjilbang. We had a lovely luch at one of the kimbap shops at the bus station. Omurice and tuna kimchi stew, delicious! We decided since we weren't far from Chuncheon we would hop on a bus and head there.
The bus journey to Chuncheon took about an hour. We headed
into the information office at the bus terminal and asked about going to a lake there. They all laughed at us and we couldn't understand why they were teling us it wasn't possible (we would get it later though). Thy were telling us to go to another island but that meant we had to get back on another bus and head to Gapyeong proper. The bus we had just been on had passed through Gapyeong and we felt it was all too much effort, so we decided to stay in Chuncheon. I had previously been to Chuncheon a few years ago, as it is a friend's hometown. Although we didn't do much then because the weather had been appalling.
We wandered for a bit and then flagged over a taxi, and got him to take us to the lake. Good job because we were walking in completely the wrong direction. W got dropped off at the lake and had a look in the Ethiopian Korean War Memorial. It was interesting, but a lot of guess work and googling info on our phones, as there was no English language information. I think we made the old man's day who worked
there and he wanted his photo taken with us.
We walked down to the lake. It was all frozen over, hence why they were telling us not to bother at the info place. But we hada nice strol along the bank for a while. Eventually we had to give us because of the cold. And we headed back to the start. While waiting for a taxi we spotteda unique situation. A car pulled up and a couple got out of the boot, yes the boot. The girl got back in. She was dolled up to the nines. She saw us watching and explained that it was her wedding day and what they would do next was a tradition, I don't know if it is Chuncheon or Gangwon-do specific, or that it happens all over Korea, because I've never seen it before. Her and some helpers got a big ball of string and tied it round the groom's waist and the bride had hold of it. Then they started the car and the groom had to walk behind the car being pulled along by his new wife. Interesting!
We hopped in a taxi and headed to the station. We
took the subway all the way back to Seoul. That was quite funny as it was filled with old people, who'd been hiking and they proceeded to have a party. One bloke had a guitar and was playing some tunes. They were even using their own camping stools as all the seats were taken. We got back to Seoul and headed to Gangnam for some lovely burritos at Dos Burritos before heading home.
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