Day 8 – Let’s add another country or two to this trip

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Sunday started bright and early. Our group booked a bus tour to get out of the city for the day, and we had to meet the bus at 7:15am. 

All right, the title of this one is a bit misleading… First stop was Petite France. About 10 years ago, a South Korean business man opened a mini town to showcase all of the French artifacts he has collected over the years, and he had quite a few. The houses/buildings are all painted in fun colors, there is French music playing, and everyone just seems happy. Everything from stained glass, French Renaissance period furniture, old clothes, ceramics, and marionette puppets were on display. It was the whole shebang. He has a a mini Eiffel Tower on display too. 

It was fun to wander and look around the mini town. Turns out they have a hotel on site, too. If you are in Korea, I probably wouldn’t recommend staying at the hotel (there isn’t THAT much to do in Petite France) but stopping by for an hour or two on a bus tour is a good option. The town has some cute mountain views with the Han River (I think the Han River, possibly the North Han River, I’m not 100% sure). 

Highlights of Petite France were the views, getting to ring an antique bell (they say if you make a wish before you ring it, your wish will come true), and watching the marionette show. All in all, a good morning.

Then we made our way to Nami Island, nestled in the middle of the North Han River. The river was found/made after some dam work was done in a nearby portion of the river in the 60s. It is also said to be the burial space for General Nami, who helped defend Korea in the 1400’s. Tozes, and day the island is filled with tree lined paths, plenty of river breezes, and general cuteness.

This definitely counts as visiting another country because the island requires you to purchase a visa to board the ferry to get to the island, and they have their own currency. They also boast that their two primary exports are imagination and fairy tales. Pretty legit stuff if you ask me. We boarded the ferry and were headed to Nami Republic.

On the island there were plenty of restaurants, which were about 2x more expensive than the restaurants in Seoul, but the food was tasty! A Korean-style chicken stir fry and a different style of seafood pancake with a tofu soup. I’m glad this country takes food so seriously. I’m also starting to find a greater appreciation of kimchi.

The grounds of Nami were really beautiful, a highly recommended stop on your Korean adventure, especially if there are small kids involved. They have children’s books everywhere. A popular Korean drama, Winter Sonata, was filmed here a few years back and there were many local couples visiting for photo shoots to reenact the kiss scene around the tree path. it was funny, cute, and annoying all at once.

I’m glad we booked a bus tour for today for a few reasons. 1. Our guide spoke English and was able to give us the run down of Petite France and Nami Island before we got there. 2. We didn’t have to worry about navigating our transportation. 3. Everyone could nap on the bus home without fear of missing our stop. (Three was the most important reason).

Upon returning to Seoul, we cleaned up (Nami Island had many dusty paths) and made our way to a small dumpling shop. I believe I have commented/complained how nothing opens before 10/10:30 around here, but I was also surprised how few things were open Sunday evening. Thankfully, the dumpling shop was delicious. The menu wasn’t in English, and translating was hard, so we blindly picked a few styles of dumplings, and it turned out great. Soup dumplings may be my new favorite dumpling.

After dinner, a few of us went wandering to a nearby neighborhood. Funnily enough, it was the same neighborhood I had visited a few nights before to stop in the game store. Not so funnily, there was a book store 2 blocks away that sold comic books. Had I known that then, I could have saved myself the disappointment of walking into two cat cafes. Oh well, it makes for a funny story.

Walking into a Korean book store was odd. Many of the books had titles in English, but all of the text in Korean. We wandered around for a while, and I found a Spiderman comic! Yay! We stopped into a few other shops and by 9:30, the day had caught up with us and we were ready for bed.