We threw Andrew’s natural-wonder plan out the window for the morning of Day 2 at Jeju, heading instead for coffee and bowling at G-Dragon’s joint (see The Great Coffee Tour: Untitled 2017). Upon our return, however, we tried to make up for it with a walk down to the beach on one of the trails that leads from the back of the pension.
Mary and I met a contender for ‘best holiday interaction’ award, in the taxi driver who drove us to Busan’s Gimhae Airport for our flight to Jeju Island. We were predisposed to like him when he stopped dead in the middle of the street to pick us up, completely ignoring the traffic behind him, but it was his self-taught English that really sealed the deal.
(As David Attenborough) “80% of the world’s black, puffer jackets are found here, on the urban streets of Seoul”. Yep, I reckon it had to be 8 in every 10, and another 1 in 10 was in a stark white puffer. This guy was part of the outrageous 1 in 10. I was terribly drawn to each and every one of them, which I think says as much about me as it does about them. The sad part is, I kind of wanted a black, puffer jacket.
Always on the agenda for Jeju Island was this; G-Dragon’s cafe (if you can call it that), Untitled 2017.
We couldn’t help ourselves.
We caught a train to Busan.
(And if you haven’t yet seen it, you really should give Train to Busan, the movie, a whirl. Like a cross between Snowpiercer and World War Z, it pulled a well-deserved 96% on Rotten Tomatoes…and its Korean zombies make the ones on The Walking Dead look clumsy and sad.)
On our last day in Seoul, we decided to do a tour of the DMZ. After reading the requisite number of reviews, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what it would be like – a busload of tourists (is that the collective noun?), a guide with a mic, and rapid-fire sightseeing checkpoints, all rounded out with a ginseng sales pitch on the way home.
Ahh, Coffee Libre. What a soothing way to return to the industrial chic of hipster-ville. Although, is it still hipster-ville if the baristas are friendly and accessible? I’m not sure.
See how I made it look like Golden Brew Black was another carefully-researched choice? Wrong. We bought coffee here on our way to Bukchon Village, and the photos I took weren’t recorded for Coffee Tour posterity, but because I liked their spotted cups (Koreans really like packaging).
I find it difficult, when travelling, to make decisions about what to do, and the same debates come up time and time again: tourist vs local, and familiar vs as-yet-unseen. On the one hand, there are things that one should probably see in a new city, such as temples and palaces and cultural centres, and there are also places and sights that have already been experienced, and therefore don’t really need to be revisited.
Anthracite may well be the coolest coffee shop I have ever been to. Their website quotes Hermann Hesse, the building is difficult to find and in the middle of nowhere, and when I first saw the name on the concrete and the giant padlocks on the door, I wondered if it was actually abandoned.
A Fat Purple Fig 