My parents visited me and Romana in Korea for three weeks. Here are a some of our days and evenings out and about.
DAY 7 OF my parents’ 3-week TRIP to Korea
We drove to Brunch Inn (브런치인) for a very nice breakfast. It’s a cafe near the marina on the east side of Tongyeong (I seem to remember having passed this on the scooter the last time I was here). The weather was scorching and there wasn’t one cloud in the sky. I think passing the yachts in the car planted the seed for taking a sailing trip…
After breakfast, we went up our second cable car in as many days! This is the Mireuksan Tongyeong Cable Car (which I’d also been to the previous year). It was much less windy than yesterday and the views stunning as ever. At the top, we wondered around, then Kevin and I walked the many steps to the peak. That took about 20 or 30 minutes. The peak was nice with panoramic views (and lots of people trying to get a picture of the summit stone).
Back near the cable car station, we had an ice cream then headed down. We could the Tongyeong Skyline Luge and had planned to go, but as the cable car passed over the entrance we could see the huge lines of people; this was a childrens’ day holiday week, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised! I’d been here last year too). Romana had picked up a flyer for sailing trips too, so I think at that point we’d decided to try a sunset sailing boat trip.
In the meantime, I suggested grabbing a coffee at Cafe de Antwerp, a coffee shop I had also been to twice on my last trip here (this is turning out to be a greatest-hits day…). The coffee was excellent and we got a table upstairs with a nice view while the owners’ daughter made us a mud pie.
The coffee shop was right by our accommodation, so we took a short rest and a nap while Romana spent some time calling around to find us a reasonably priced sailing trip. It wasn’t easy due to this being a holiday week, but she persevered and got one. We set off in the early evening and found the boat and captain. There was us four and a couple on the trip. The captain took the boat out and piloted us to Hansando, and island that is part of the National Park and a historical place connected to the famous naval general. I’d also driven around here last year!
The perfectly calm weather made for an extremely pleasant trip but there wasn’t enough wind for sailing. Romana and I sat on the front deck and enjoyed the relaxing ride. Along the way there were other pleasure boats out with various levels of fun, from music and lights and drink, to calm and quiet like ours! There was also a section near the island filled with jelly fish, and also plenty of seagulls following us. Hansando looked lovely from afar and we spent a short time in the bay taking photos. The captain even broke out a bottle of chilled white wine (we paid for it) and we had a glass while sitting on the water; nice! On the way back to Tongyeong, we got to see the sunset over the hills which rounded off the trip perfectly.
Back at the marina, we looked around for some food and opted for some grilled fish. Back our pension, we (you guessed it) played Yahtzee (I think I even won a game!). Great day today.