Korean Adventure Day 15

An early morning for our trip to Jeju Island. And if you think 1 hour and 18 minutes won’t be enough time to leave your hotel and make it onto the plane you’d be wrong. If you can believe it we checked out of our hotel at 6:40am, walked to the train station, took the train, walked through the terminal, checked in at the ticket agent to get boarding passes, went through security and made it to our gate just as the plane was starting to board at 7:50am. Gotta say, even for a seasoned traveler, this was way to close for comfort. I was a little stressed.

The flight was just over an hour long, but when we landed, we were really quite hungry. Nobody has had their coffee yet! Eek. Unfortunately, food is not a priority yet. Instead, we must go to the car rental place to get our minivan/bus. A 12 passenger van for 9 of us plus all of our luggage. Phew. To say it was a tight fit is an understatement! But we did it.

Now, finally, we head out for…lunch…brunch? A popular spot on the island for Jeju’s famous black pork dishes. We learned that it is named so solely because the meat comes from black pigs. Otherwise, it is just like regular pork. We are all pretty happy with the food, but many still need their coffee. So we’re off on a cafe hunt.

We find a very cool, very large coffee shop with tons of seating areas and a very large bakery section. Everybody is happy now. We all take some time to gather ourselves and figure out what is going to happen for the rest of the day.

Our first POI is the Shinchang Windmill Road. Talk about making lemons into lemonade! These windmills are enormous, an eyesore, and very loud. But they are necessary on the island. Jeju has done a great job at embracing them and turning the area into an attraction. They are integrated into the landscape and the Haenyeo cultural spots.

There is a very popular art studio on the island, AlNaMan Gallery, that uses debris found along the shoreline to create works of art. The artist teaches the concept of upcycling to school groups, artists and tourists alike. I loved it so much that I was able to buy an art piece that was drawn with a broken chopstick dipped in ink and the frame is made of drift wood.

Finally we reach the Osulloc Tea Museum and learn a bit about the tea business on the island. What was really great was all the teas we got to sample and then all the tea based desserts they make.

Dinner was memorable for Margaret and myself tonight. We chose to abandon the group, order Korean Fried Chicken (the best chicken in the world!!), open a bottle of wine, put in our earbuds and ignore the world for the evening. It all almost went to plan too! Except…the bottle of wine we chose needed a corkscrew, which we didn’t have. So, we had to leave our room, in our pj’s, with our bottle of wine, and walk the street until we finally found a restaurant that was open and was willing to decipher the charades we acted out to then open up our bottle of wine. Aaahhh. Now we can go back to the room and relax!!

It was heaven.