Jon and I took our first real vacation last weekend since arriving in Korea four months ago, albeit a very short one. For a pre-Valentine's day weekened getaway, we went to the seaside town of Yeosu, a mere 25 minutes away by train. This was really a good one to break into our Asian travels since it was relatively close, cheap, stressfree, AND we had a familiar tour guide, complete with a car. One of Jon's English students and both our religion students happened to live in Yeosu and offered to be our tour guide for the weekend. She gets more English practice and we get a ride and a tour- win win :)
We left Saturday afternoon, were picked up by Lia at the train station, and headed straight for Odongdo, or Odong Island (do means island). It's a beautifully small but scenic area, connected to the mainland by a breakaway that takes about 15 minutes to walk. We went up to the top of the lighthouse, walked (literally) all around the paths of the island, and saw a cave at the water's edge.
Afterwards, Lia gave us a bit of a driving tour of Yeosu's highlights, including a famous bridge that lights up at night, and a beautiful park on a hill, where we met the mascots of Yeosu's upcoming Marine Expo. We had a nice dinner at a half Korean half Western buffet, and spent the rest of the evening relaxing in our hotel room at the Bellagio Tourist Hotel. Probably the only time we'll be staying at the Bellagio, especially for only about $50 :)
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| Mascots of Yeosu's upcoming Expo |
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| Beautiful Yeosu |
The next day we had a leisurely western breakfast provided by the hotel at a classy 11th floor room of the hotel, overlooking the city, the water, the surrounding islands, and the moutains as the sun came up. Lia picked us up, and we made the one hour drive out to Hyanigram Temple. This temple is quite famous not just in Yeosu, but in our entire region of Korea. Many people go to this particular temple on New Year's Day and watch the sunrise here and make wishes here. It was a goregous and unique place, and we enjoyed stretching our legs up the long walk to get there and down the many stairs to get back. Thankfully the weather was gorgeous the whole weekend, still a bit of a winter chill, but blue skies and sunny. On our way up to the temple we saw a man in a shop painting with some charcoal. It looked intriquing, so we stopped in chatted with him a bit and ended up buying two of his paintings to add to our travel art collection. After exploring the temple, we drove back to town, had some pizza, thanked our lovely tour guide, and were soon on our way back home to Suncheon. Hopefully all of our future travels this year are just as successful and relaxing!
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| Local artist |
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| A temple, built into a mountain, overlooking the sea. Could you get any more scenic?? |
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| Turtle temples |
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| The many parts of the temple built into the mountain |
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| Jon and I with Lia, our tour guide for the weekend |
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