This was the third day of me and Romana’s seven-day road trip to the east coast.
Firenze Cafe for brunch
After breaking camp, we drove to the coast and south to the Jukbyeon Coast monorail (죽변 해안 스카이레일) area. We had a brunch of coffee and avocado toast at the Firenze Gogung Cafe (also a motel). There were nice views from the cafe and the brunch was nice. I asked the server about their connection to I Like Mountain cafe in Goyang, Seoul but she didn’t know; this place used to be a second branch but I guess they sold up and the new owners kept everything the same!
Jukbyeon Coast Skyrail 죽변 해안 스카이레일
The Jukbyeon Coast Skyrail (죽변 해안 스카이레일) travels along a really spectacular piece of rocky coastline. We visited on account of the amazing photos we’d seen online, but unfortunately the weather wasn’t great for this attraction that day. We got tickets for the monorail, but it was quite busy so we had to wait to even join the line! We waited in the car, then went up the stairs when it was time. Once in the line, we waited slowly moving forward for another 20 minutes or so. The weather was very cloudy and the waves were quite spectacular, but the monorail car had very dirty windows so there weren’t many great photo opportunities. On a sunny day, this would have been a lot more spectacular. Also it the upper part of the track was closed for some reason. The round-trip took about 40 or 50 minutes.
Seongnyugul Cave 성류굴
We didn’t have a plan for what to do next but we had our accommodation booked. We found a cave attraction on the way, a little bit inland. Once inland, the weather was gorgeous again; sunny, breezy, clear! Huh. We ventured into the cool and quite large system of caves. There were lots of other groups and everyone (including us) was very excited. There were long tunnels, pools of water with carp in them(?!), and or course a ton of weird looking stalactites and -mites. We were in there for quite a while. The photos aren’t great.
We went to a restaurant on the way back to the car park, and got some deep fried fish and makgeolli. We stopped for a few photos next to a rice paddy next to the car park. Gorgeous greens!
Crab on terrace at Ocean View Pension
We then made our way to Ocean View Pension (오션뷰펜션민박). We stopped a few times to take photos of the lovely sandy coast and rocks, including a huge crab statue at Mangyang! It was a pretty cool place set on top of some cliffs that looked out to the sea. A very basic interior though! The room was a little wooden hut on the cliff edge. We had a short rest then decided we wanted steamed crab! We drove into a small town a bit further south to find steamed crab, but there wasn’t anything so we drove back. It turned out the next to our accommodation was a fish place that sold take-out steamed crab: Baekmihyang (백미향)! It would take a while to prepare, so we walked down to the beach area where we found so many more restaurants! We took our dinner and ate in the garden area overlooking the sea, next to our hut. We caught the attention of a few cats; they got a few mouthfuls of crab guts which they seemed to enjoy! Then bed for day four tomorrow!
Places visited on this trip: