We postponed out journey to Busan since it turns out my sister and brother in law want to go when they come to visit. That, and the fact that we are going to the most expensive country in the world in a couple of weeks and it seemed prudent to conserve precious resources in anticipation of being reminded how weak the dollar is.
As a consolation prize of sorts we spent the day out in Incheon, due west of Seoul. We've been wanting to get out there. The new airport is in Incheon, so we passed through, but there is also a town to see. It takes about an hour on the train to the end of the line. The ride costs only 1600 won-- a buck sixty. Not a bad deal.
Incheon is best known as the site of Douglas MacArthur's famous and dashing amphibious landing during the Korean War, which is a major reason I wanted to see the coast there. It is one of those placenames really seared into my mind.
It turns out Incheon is also something of a seedy party area along the water, though not this time of year. Going there today was not especially pressing since it may have been the coldest day yet. From Incheon it is possible to catch ferries to the West Sea islands, but that is something for a warm day and those are long off.
The town is sprawling from the port up some very steep hills, and smells and looks like a hardworking industrial and transportation town.
This may have been a plywood factory, there were many trucks carrying plywood driving out of it.
Incheon has a large and very busy port, many dry docks and container loading docks. It doesn't look too different from our hometown Norfolk and Portsmouth, in fact. (That isn't a compliment).
But is sure is hard to complain about a bustling port...
There is a Chinatown district directly across from the train station. It is definitely designed to funnel tourists in. It has an impressive gate and a bunch of restaurants and stores filled with trinkets. It was not an impressive Chinatown as Chinatowns go, but that is ok.
Parallel to this street on the right was a street called (on the map) "Street of Raw Large-eyed Herring mixed with vegetables."
The hills through the Chinatown were something though, especially pushing a baby stroller. Amazingly hard to push that up a sharp grade. The trip up the hill yields this nice view of the harbor standing behind a statue of Confucius:
Up the hill and then up some Exorcist-style steps you eventually reach a statue and small park dedicated to MacArthur. I'm no fan, but I hiked up the steps and took a look. The Incheon landing was a hell of an accomplishment, whatever his other (multiple) failings were. MacArthur is buried in Norfolk and that shrine to him was on my mind as I was here.
Incheon is known as a place to eat raw fish, which is something we are always happy to eat of course and probably a big reason we went there.
So we headed out to Wolmi Island. The tourist center at the train station hands you a map and the island looks like a beautiful park. There is, in fact, a large park in the middle, culminating in a wooded hill with trails. But around it on one side is heavy industry and the port, and on the other the Wolmi Wharf and "Wolmido Cultural Street."
We picked a place at random and ended up being fed so much food and so many sea creatures of such bizarre variety that we remained happily stuffed until long after we got home. The main fish was flounder sashimi, and there were mussels, oysters, something called mungo (?) which is truly the strangest thing I have ever eaten (click on the picture to see the full glisten of this thing):
.jpg)
With a lot of wasabi it was not bad. There were about seven other dishes as well which we could not identify. The most interesting new thing was something that looked like white marmalade and tasted like vinegar, but was some sea creature's flesh. It was pretty good, whatever it was. Then, when it was all done, they made a soup with the flounder carcass at our table and we ate that. Usually that soup is a very spicy red soup, this was a very peppery brown soup, very tasty. All of this was served after we had been eating for more than an hour, very Korean, never stop eating:
"Wolmido Cultural Street" ended up being a strip of bars and restaurants along the water. It was a literally a strip, as behind it was nothing but empty lots and city bus parking. The "Seeside Soju Club" gives you an idea.
It was very cold but nice to be outside and walking along the water.
This was one way I had envisioned the Incheon landing site, grey, cold, thick mud.
I was really astonished how run down the street became. As we walked to the end of the strip, it became desolate and empty. There was even graffiti, which I don't think I have seen at all in Korea.
As a consolation prize of sorts we spent the day out in Incheon, due west of Seoul. We've been wanting to get out there. The new airport is in Incheon, so we passed through, but there is also a town to see. It takes about an hour on the train to the end of the line. The ride costs only 1600 won-- a buck sixty. Not a bad deal.
Incheon is best known as the site of Douglas MacArthur's famous and dashing amphibious landing during the Korean War, which is a major reason I wanted to see the coast there. It is one of those placenames really seared into my mind.
It turns out Incheon is also something of a seedy party area along the water, though not this time of year. Going there today was not especially pressing since it may have been the coldest day yet. From Incheon it is possible to catch ferries to the West Sea islands, but that is something for a warm day and those are long off.
The town is sprawling from the port up some very steep hills, and smells and looks like a hardworking industrial and transportation town.
This may have been a plywood factory, there were many trucks carrying plywood driving out of it.
Incheon has a large and very busy port, many dry docks and container loading docks. It doesn't look too different from our hometown Norfolk and Portsmouth, in fact. (That isn't a compliment).
But is sure is hard to complain about a bustling port...
There is a Chinatown district directly across from the train station. It is definitely designed to funnel tourists in. It has an impressive gate and a bunch of restaurants and stores filled with trinkets. It was not an impressive Chinatown as Chinatowns go, but that is ok.
Parallel to this street on the right was a street called (on the map) "Street of Raw Large-eyed Herring mixed with vegetables."
The hills through the Chinatown were something though, especially pushing a baby stroller. Amazingly hard to push that up a sharp grade. The trip up the hill yields this nice view of the harbor standing behind a statue of Confucius:
Up the hill and then up some Exorcist-style steps you eventually reach a statue and small park dedicated to MacArthur. I'm no fan, but I hiked up the steps and took a look. The Incheon landing was a hell of an accomplishment, whatever his other (multiple) failings were. MacArthur is buried in Norfolk and that shrine to him was on my mind as I was here.
Incheon is known as a place to eat raw fish, which is something we are always happy to eat of course and probably a big reason we went there.
So we headed out to Wolmi Island. The tourist center at the train station hands you a map and the island looks like a beautiful park. There is, in fact, a large park in the middle, culminating in a wooded hill with trails. But around it on one side is heavy industry and the port, and on the other the Wolmi Wharf and "Wolmido Cultural Street."
We picked a place at random and ended up being fed so much food and so many sea creatures of such bizarre variety that we remained happily stuffed until long after we got home. The main fish was flounder sashimi, and there were mussels, oysters, something called mungo (?) which is truly the strangest thing I have ever eaten (click on the picture to see the full glisten of this thing):
.jpg)
With a lot of wasabi it was not bad. There were about seven other dishes as well which we could not identify. The most interesting new thing was something that looked like white marmalade and tasted like vinegar, but was some sea creature's flesh. It was pretty good, whatever it was. Then, when it was all done, they made a soup with the flounder carcass at our table and we ate that. Usually that soup is a very spicy red soup, this was a very peppery brown soup, very tasty. All of this was served after we had been eating for more than an hour, very Korean, never stop eating:
"Wolmido Cultural Street" ended up being a strip of bars and restaurants along the water. It was a literally a strip, as behind it was nothing but empty lots and city bus parking. The "Seeside Soju Club" gives you an idea.
It was very cold but nice to be outside and walking along the water.
This was one way I had envisioned the Incheon landing site, grey, cold, thick mud.
I was really astonished how run down the street became. As we walked to the end of the strip, it became desolate and empty. There was even graffiti, which I don't think I have seen at all in Korea.
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