Seoraksan

This morning, Regan, Chloe and I left on our adventure to the Eastern Sea (what the rest of the world calls the Sea of Japan). In order to beat the notoriously bad Seoul traffic, we left at 4:00 am. It wasn't early enough. We arrived at Chunchon (a trip that should have taken about two hours) at around noon. We stopped at this small, lakeside town for sight seeing (giant lady statue) and watched a truck "plough" a driveway for ten fascinating minutes. We then stopped for lunch at a small cafe, grabbed some snacks at a convenience store, and headed out on the road to Sokcho.

The ride through the mountains was amazing. Not only were the roads mountainous and narrow, not only was our map a year old (apparently a lot can happen to Korean roads in a year), not only did we have to deal with some "interesting" drivers, but it was during a full on blizzard. We stopped for a ten minute break at the top of the mountain, and when we got back to the car it was covered with a foot of snow. Blizzard. But we arrived safely at our destination, with no casualties. Except for the glasses Regan left at the small cafe in Chunchon.*

We then began checking out hotels:

#1. Shaped like a castle

#2. Shaped like a boat

#3. Shaped like a nice hotel.

We chose #3.

The Maremons was a very nice hotel that was probably very expensive in the summer. In February, however, we got an upper-level, beach-view room for about the price of a decent motel back home. Forget the fact that the "beach" in our "beach-view" was covered with a foot-and-a-half of snow, it was terrific. We then headed over to-

Oh wait, before that, on our way to the Castle hotel we ran into some car trouble. After heisting a blizzard in the mountains, we somehow ran over a nail in a perfectly flat road and had to deal with a punctured tire. Regan got us over to a gas station, communicated the problem to the mechanic, and got the tire fixed and inflated for like three dollars. He actually tried to haggle the price up, he felt that bad. The whole thing set us back like twenty minutes.

So we headed over to E Mart for groceries, and while we were there, grabbed a food court dinner. Food courts work differently here. You order your food by number at a central desk, then pick up your food from the corresponding restaurant when your order is up. Amazingly, we all got exactly what we expected. After that, we returned to the hotel where we watched Korean TV until calling it an early night.

We awoke the next morning just in time to catch the sunrise over the "Eastern Sea." Had the beach been white with sand instead of snow, it would have been even nicer. We then set out bright and early (again) to beat the traffic on the way to Seoraksan mountain. We didn't (again). But once we were there, we entered a winter wonderland, covered with about four feet of snow. We took a cable car up to the peak, and I made it my personal mission to climb past the farthest footprints (speed, balance, agility…). I conquered the mountain, but was in turn conquered by its snow. We then slid halfway back down the mountain to ginned a secluded temple, and somehow trudged our way back up again. We took the cable car back down, and had a traditional Korean lunch of rice, soup and fried baloney sandwiches (God dammit, Regan).

UPDATE: Regan made a special trip back there a few days later. The glasses were exactly where he left them. Korea is the safest place in the world to lose your glasses.