We went to the biggest palace in Seoul today, which was beautiful. The grounds were large and I wish I had the stamina & weather to just explore it slowly for two days. It was apparently the royal ruling center, with the living quarter palaces a walking distance away. It’s within a stone’s throw of the Blue House (Korea’s president lives/works here, like the White House for the US). It was a mildly grey day when we left. It did not end that way.

You might notice in that last picture there’s quite a lot of rain. Huge thunderstorm that caught a lot of people (including us) off-guard. We ended up very soaked. While everyone huddled under the eaves of the palace, we decided to make a break for it to get nearer to one of the city streets in the hopes we’d be able to hail a taxi (narrator: they were not able to hail a taxi).

Eventually, we made it to the subway dripping wet, and took the subway back to the closest station to where we were staying, and walked back in the rain, which had fortunately died way down. Exciting! Damp!

Later, Ei-Nyung’s friend brought us a LOT of fried chicken. We left the traditional-but-comically-uncomfortable place we were staying at, our last stop in Seoul, and took a delayed flight to Jeju Island. For the record, if you rent a car from Hertz in Jeju, it’ll be at the Lotte rental. And literally NOTHING ANYWHERE will tell you that.

Which is a strange tactic, Hertz. We found this out because a random other tourist happened to overhear us looking for the Hertz, and she’d said that she booked something through Hertz and it ended up at Lotte. I have no idea, honestly, how we’d otherwise have figured this out other than asking every shuttle driver individually.

But otherwise, an uneventful drive from North to South (approx 40 min), and we arrived at the Grang Seongwipo (not a typo), where the host, “Uncle Jae”, is sort of shockingly charming. We went to have dinner at a place that specializes in pork. You literally cannot order anything else. It was great.

I then had a cookies-and-cream ice cream sandwich from the CU, a convenience store (between CU, GS25 (a “lifestyle platform”) and 7-11, in the cities in Korea you’d have a convenience store at maximum a block or two from you at al times, which was, indeed, “convenient”. The sandwich was made up of two very thin layers of pound cake sandwiching the ice cream. It was fantastic.

The next day, we went to the nearby waterfall, which was gorgeous. 

That first one was good, so we went to two more.

Stopped at Ray’s Mango on the way back from the 1st waterfall, and this was the best mango I’ve ever had and it wasn’t even close. Wow. the thing (in the picture) is a mango smoothie with mango ice with some cream, and then big chunks of the best mango ever.

Things I’m not worried about here:

• • • Broken windows
    • random shootings
    • aggressive, potentially violent racism
    • violence of any kind
    • that our stuff will get stolen

  Kind of a massive psychic load off. It’s weird that that’s the noise we live under constantly in the US.

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Hamdeok beach today. This was on the northeast side of the island, so we drove up from Seongwipo (center south), about 45 minutes away. Lovely sand, blue water. Crisp & refreshing. 😀 Next time we stay in Jeju, I think the goal will be to stay closer to a beach. This time, the goal was “waterfalls”, and you know, mission accomplished. So next time, “beach”.

Jeju’s oranges are fucking delicious. 

The oranges are super bright. Tart without being overbearing, incredibly juicy. If you took a juicy mandarin and added 5% lemon for acid, it’s sorta like that.

And the food market was less of a madhouse than Gwangjang Market with more variety. We missed a section until after we’d eaten that looked amazing and would definitely be tomorrow’s dinner if we were still here. Alas! Next time.

I didn’t remember much from the first time I came here in 2001(?), but I’d definitely come back here. It really does have a “Hawaii of Korea” vibe. Great food, chill, lots of natural beauty. A nice break between Seoul and the places we’ll be in Japan.

On the trip, I’ve been playing Phoenix Wright, and reading Range, by David Epstein, which I’d totally recommend.

The book is about why generalism is good, which is a message I definitely like hearing. 🙂

Thanks for a great trip. Bye, Korea! Until next time.