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Mountain of Crab, Temple on the Ocean, and Chicken on a Griddle

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 On Wednesday Nicole and I grabbed a late morning coffee and pastry and made a call back to the states. Our plan was to visit 2 Buddhist temples: the only seaside temple on the East coast - Naksana, and a temple in the Seoraksan National Park - Baekdamsa. We soon realized that our late start paired with the 1+ hour drive to each would mean we could only visit one and we chose the one next to the crab restaurants. Sokcho is a small town about halfway between Gangneung and the North Korean border and is lined with locally sourced seafood restaurants, some with kitschy decorations to draw-in hungry outsiders. The spot we chose had a large fiberglass crab. Our meal was impressive - it started out modestly with simple bonchon of rice cake, cabbage, whole prawns and kimchi, but expanded to the...I guess pre-meal? Fried fish with a sweet sauce, tempura shrimp, fresh fish salad, white fish sashimi, corn cheese, and kimchi pajeon. I was almost full by the time the main course of enormous, p...
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First Time Setting the Canon Loose

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 As promised I am back after a long day to finish my first full day in Korea. After lunch, coffee and more coffee we headed out to the Heo Gyun Nanseolheon Memorial Park in the northeast part of town. Heo Nanseolheon was a painter and poet of note from the mid-Jeoson Dynasty (1500's AD). Unfortunately I didn't learn much about her during our visit, but thats mostly my fault. I was going nuts because this was the first time I was able to break out my SLR to photograph Korea. The park has a few Hanok-style buildings, one of which you can pay 2000 won to enter and have tea and rice cake in a traditional setting. Of course we had to partake. Replica of a traditional Hanok-style house where we had tea Settings for multiple tea parties Rice Cake Just to show it wasn't just a façade on the outside to make it look traditional Lovely place settings Next to the tea room there were additional traditional buildings that demonstrate key pieces of old-world Korean life. In-floor heating ...
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