속초... Sokcho

Since it's our summer break, we took a little weekend road trip with my birth family to 속초, a city on the northeastern coast of Korea. It's pretty close to the DMZ.

Little fun fact learned from Wikipedia: "Lying north of the 38th parallel, the city belonged to North Korea from 1945 until the end of the Korean War, when the dividing line between the two Korean states was officially altered. Consequently, many of the population have relatives in North Korea."

We clown car-ed it with 6 people smashed into a car designed for 5. Mark and Mr. Kim were in the front and there were 4 people in the back seat... SangKwun, Emily, her sister, and me. Luckily, we're all pretty small.... but it wasn't the most comfortable of situations.

Needless to say, I was pretty happy when the 3.5 hour drive was completed. Once we arrived, we relaxed in the hotel room for a little while, then had lunch.

We went to a grilled fish and soup restaurant. But what they really seemed to specialize in was side dishes. Check out all those 반찬!

After lunch, we set out for Sokcho beach. Actually, Mark and I weren't informed that we were going to the beach until we were there, so we didn't have our swimsuits. But it was still fun walking in the sand and putting our feet in the water.

After the beach, we boarded a little tourist boat for a cruise around the area.

There were a TON of seagulls waiting to be fed by the passengers. Some of them were even able to catch chips and snacks in mid-air. Mark took a couple videos that we will post later.

After the ride, we went to this old fashioned restaurant for dinner.

This light is so pretty isn't it?

속초 is famous for two types of food, both of which we got to try at dinner. We had 순두부 찌개, a tofu soup. I like it a lot in Seoul, but this was the best version I've ever had. It wasn't spicy, though you could add your own seasoning. We also had 오징아 순대, which according to the Korean Tourism Organization is: This “sausage” made from squid is cooked by taking the intestines out of the squid and filling it with a mixture of tofu, rice noodles, onions, carrots, and egg. The stuffed squid is then baked or sauteed and cut up into small edible pieces and is a very popular snack or side dish when drinking.

Unfortunately, I failed to take pics once the food arrived, and I couldn't find a pic of the 순두부 찌개 that was similar to what we ate. So I just leave you with a pic of the 오징아 순대. It was just okay for me. I still haven't fully jumped on the squid-eating train, but Mark looooved it.

::image via Wikipedia::

Wow, this is a looong post. Looking back we did a LOT on this trip! I think I'll stop now and add another post about Waterpia and Seorak Mountain soon.

Busan Trip

We spent the weekend in Busan (on the southern part of South Korea) with some co-workers and friends of theirs. There were about 30 people who went on the trip, and since leaving America, we have not spent this much time with this many foreigners! Beaches, beer, and sun... what more could we want!

Friday night we took the late night bullet train down to Busan. When we got to Busan, we checked into our love motel (which was much nicer than we expected) and headed to the beach to shoot off some fireworks and drink some beer and soju. Unfortunately, the camera stayed in the love motel so we didn't get any pics of that night.

The next day I awoke nice and early to head to the fish market and the shopping district with the girls. Mark proceeded to spend the entire day on the beach with no sunscreen. By the end of the day he looked like a lobster!

Here are some pictures of the fish market. There were a ton of stalls like this where we could buy fresh seafood.

In addition, there were other random carts, like this apple cart all over the place. I love Korean apples, they're so big and taste sweeter than American apples for some reason.

The fish market backed up to this pier and the ocean. Talk about fresh seafood!

We went to a little restaurant by the fish market for some sushi, sashimi, and grilled fish. It was really good.

After that, we went to this huge shopping district with a bunch of little boutiques and well-known Western stores. I ended up buying a summery dress.

The shopping area had a bunch of food carts all over. Apparently, Busan is famous for its green onion pancakes, so of course, we had to try it. Here's the lady cooking them. She basically took some pancake batter, mixed it with green onions, and fried them on this cart. When we ordered one, she cut them up (for easy chopstick eating) and drizzled a soy sauce mixture on it. It was tasty, but a bit too greasy to eat a lot of.

Then we went to get strawberry smoothies from this lady. What she did shocked us... as she was pouring the strawberries into the blender, one fell on the ground. And as we were watching her, she picked it OFF THE GROUND and threw it into the blender. It was kind of funny because one of the girls with me was a germaphobe and was pretty grossed out by that. But the smoothies did end up being pretty good... Ah well, gotta eat a little dirt before we die, right?

There was this statue that said "Free Hugs." So of course, I had to take advantage. :)

We then rejoined Mark on the beach. Isn't the water and sand beautiful? We want to take another trip down here when it warms up a bit more.

For dinner we went to some small huts on the beach that sold soft shell crab, oysters, and shrimp. They pulled them right out of the aquarium and cooked them for us. Delicious!

This final shot is just to make all you Midwesterners jealous. It's gorgeous isn't it?!??!

So, that's a short summary of how we spent our Easter weekend. Hope you all enjoyed your Easters as much as we did!