South Korea 2024

I passed up our scarce Yosemite reservations to come to Korea - but not an opportunity to sleep on the ground last night... just like camping! It is the old, traditional Korean way of sleeping except the “pad” we were given is a thin down comforter - I miss my comfy camping pad! After my sleep last night, my watch told me that my health metrics were out of whack - and I suspect the hard floor to be the culprit. “Consider yoga or taking a rest day,” my watch suggested. “Oh I like that idea,” Chris agreed. Ummm … that’s not what is on today’s itinerary!   Today’s plan was a sunrise hike and at 5:30am there were already five cars lined up to enter the parking lot. (We drove the short distance from the hotel to save time.) The parking fee must vary depending on the time you go because last night it was ₩6,000 and this morning the attendant collected ₩10,000.   We are headed up 2860 feet to the Seoraksan National Park’s icon Ulsanbawi Rock, a unique rock formation composed ...

 Our first stop of the day was what others reviewed as the highlight of their vacation: Gangchon rail bike, old train tracks repurposed for recreation. I’ve always wanted to do it in Humboldt, California and in Korea it is a fraction of the price. It definitely fit the bill as one of those activities I like to try when I travel.   Getting to Gangchon is a big reason we decided to rent a car in Korea. The naver app says it is a three-hour multi-subway/train combo to get there from Seoul, which sounds like a pain but doable, until you realize that one of the segments only runs every 2 hours. Try to sync that with your reservation time for the rail bikes and it became a hard no for us. So we drove instead. When I woke up, naver told me we had a 90-minutes drive. However by the time we got packed up and into the car at 7:30am, the ETA was past our 10am reservations, especially since they tell you to arrive 30 minutes prior. I tried to stay positive during the long drive that s...

Today (Friday) Chris kept me company in the hotel room. Samsung told him he is welcome to go into work but they wouldn’t be there because it is Family Day.  At the end of the work day, we had reservations to pick up our “Hertz” rental car. When I couldn’t pinpoint it on the map, I was a little skeptical - it turns out for good reason. Hertz was in name only and the actual rental agency was Lotte. That’s not an issue other than they refused to give us the car until we paid another $112 since Chris is only 25; they didn’t care that Hertz already charged us their under-age driver fee. Chris’ theory is that you have to be at least 25 years old, which is 26 in Korea, but since he told Hertz he was 25, Korea took it literally instead of adding a year. (Korean age is always one year more than your international age; they are one year’s old at birth.)   If you visit Korea, you are likely to go to a temple, an important part of Korea's landscape.  Korea has a 1,700-year Buddhi...