Hi all. Last week we got out of Dodge and went to Jeollabuk Province in the southwest part of Korea. First we went to Jeonju (hometown of now Phillies pitcher, Chan Ho Park) and a temple near there. Jeonju has a nicely kept portion of the city where things are the way they were 50 or more years ago. Scenes like this are disappearing fast. Korea is doing what the US did for a long time, talk about valuing their heritage, but doing little to preserve what isn’t obviously cultural heritage material. Sure, old temples and natural wonders are easy to want to save, but neighborhoods of yesteryear are being torn down without compunction. Many of the old neighborhoods which remain are now chi-chi, with fancy restaurants and teahouses and prices to match. The old neighborhood in Jeonju isn’t too bad. At least the families from long ago are mostly still there and it feels pretty normal. I imagine that in the tourist season there is a boatload of foreigners there. It must be in Lonely Planet. Yes, for sure. There is a tourism office and maps of the area. We just walked around there for a couple of hours. The first picture below is of one of the lanes. The second is of a restaurant where we ate lunch. The room behind the well and tree was our private dining room. The next is of the spread, which as readers of this blog now know, is typical. The last is just a goofy “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” picture of me and the sweat band I need to eat Korean food.
After that we went to Byeonsan Peninsula National Park, most famous for Naesosa temple and Chaeseokgang Seashore. The temple was typical and I’ll spare you more temple pictures at this time. The coastline there is pretty, of course. The most famous of the “sites” is this striated cliff area.
Next we went to Naejangsan National Park. It was beautifully wintery. Here are some wintery scenes which speak for themselves.
We were only gone three days, so that’s about it. A cold snap and heavy snow was due, so we went home. It turned out that the cold snap is indeed here, but the snowfall in that area was about 10-15 centimeters (4-6 inches).
We got a call from the real estate woman today. Tentatively, there is a guy who wants to rent this place. We’ll find out later today, maybe. It’s possible we will be out of here by next week. I’ll let you know.
Until then, be well all of you.