I took a ton of pictures—some good, some bad—on the night of January 17 while I was out and about in Yeosu. I strolled from my yeogwan across the Dolsan Bridge and tromped up Dolsan itself—the very small but very famous local mountain whose summit is crowned with a monument that sits in what has to be one of the tackiest parks I've ever seen in Korea. It's eternally Christmas up there: all the plants have been covered in electric Christmas lights, and there are sculptures and weird tableaux whose meaning completely escapes me. While I was at the top, I bought some cotton candy from one of the several friendly cotton-candy vendors; my swirl cost me only W3,000 and was larger than my head. I polished it off in no time, of course. The summit was crowded with tourists; in that way, it was a lot like Namsan in Seoul.
Also at the top of the mountain was a building that houses several restaurants, a restroom, a shop or two, and a cable-car rig. I couldn't understand the need for a cable car: the mountain was easily scalable in just a couple minutes—too low, too short, to merit a cable car.
The series of pics below begins with a couple fuzzy snaps of my yeogwan before moving on to some scenes of Dolsan Bridge, Dolsan itself, the path up the mountain, the monument and tacky park, and eventually a couple shots of some of the sashimi restaurants, one of which served me my dinner (hwaedeop-bap). The sashimi itself was great, but the side dishes at that restaurant left much to be desired.
What should really stand out to you, Dear Reader, is that Yeosu isn't some quiet little beach town, which is what I'd originally thought it was. It's actually quite built-up, and is apparently a popular vacation destination. There was a lot that I didn't have the chance to explore; I plan on going back, though, because Yeosu seems to have a lot to offer.
(Hover your cursor over the images for the captions.)
I have pictures from my walk along Route 17, through Yeosu's downtown, and all the way up to Chonnam National University campus, but I'll save those for another post.
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Looks like an interesting place--never been there myself. I like your looming statue in that one photo of the "stars" on the ground. Gives the scene a rather ominous feel.
ReplyDelete(Also, question: Why the hyphen between "hwaedeop" and "bap"? 덮밥 is the basic dish here, with 회 being the modifier, so if anything it should be "hwae-deopbap," no?)
Charles,
ReplyDeleteI had no idea how to divide the word. My instinct was to hyphenate before "-bap" because there are so many "-bap" dishes: kimbap, ssambap, boribap, jumokbap, bibimbap, etc. So it seemed only natural to write "hwaedeop-bap." But if "hwaedeop" isn't its own thing, then I stand corrected.
Yeah, "hwaedeop" is not a thing. It's the "deopbap" that's a thing, literally meaning "covered rice," or "rice covered with something." (예: 회덮밥, 불고기덮밥, 오징어덮밥 등)
ReplyDelete