Seoul Searching: 춘천 모험 (Chuncheon adventure)

I had a nice romantic day with myself!

On Sunday I had myself a little adventure. I escaped Seoul for a day and headed to the very pleasant lakeside city of Chuncheon. Chuncheon is the provincial capital of Gangwon-do (the province next to Gyeonggi-do province that surrounds the self-administrating national capital of Seoul.) In other words, it's not so far from Seoul! And the really great thing is that you can take the subway all the way there even though it's in a whole other province! Hooray, or as the Koreans would say, 아싸! (ah-sa!) My initial excitement to take the subway all the way there and back didn't last all that long though when I realised how long it meant I would actually have to spend on the subway. The journey from my station was estimated at 2 and a half hours each way although it was closer to a total of 6 hours spent on the subway that day! Wow. Wasn't all bad though as I managed to be seated for the majority of both journeys and it meant I had a lot of time to read my book. It was actually quite relaxing and enjoyable.

Aside from the fact that I wanted to see this pretty lakeside city there was one main reason that I had to go there. And that reason was food. Chuncheon is the city in Korea that is famous for '닭갈비' (dak galbi) which happens to be my favourite Korean dish. When I first came to Korea, it was way too spicy for me but has since then become my number one favourite food in this country. Basically it's made by stir-frying chicken in a red pepper paste (the Korean favourite!) sauce called '고추장' (gochujang) with cabbage, sweet potatoes, onions and 떡(tteok-rice cakes). You cook it yourself on a hotplate at your table, or if you're a bit useless like me, one of the nice Korean ladies will come to your table and do it for you. So all I had to do was focus on eating. 아싸! -you remember, right?! You can add extra things if you like and it's great topped with cheese so of course I opted for that. It was delicious! And despite the large portion, I ate every last bit! Almost six hours on a subway for that, remember! There wasn't a chance I was wasting any.