Korea yet again for the 7th time - March and April 2026 - Page 7

The first site I thought would be historic. Hmmm. It is the royal portrait museum, but also there is a shrine. The shrine is being rebuilt.

An actual old building in between the newer ones, I think.

Through there is a historical shrine under construction.

There is some bamboo.

Here is the actual royal portrait museum, most of it is underground. I should mention that there is an entry fee of about $2.50.

The royal portraits seem to involve ms paint and projectors. Most of the actual portraits were drawn in about 2007 when the slow city movement started.

These wheelbarrows are re-creations of the actual wheelbarrows that were used to transport the real royal portraits, I think.

Back at the main street through the hanok village, and it is hot with bright sun today. I got burnt.

Nearby is a covered bridge, just like Madison county. You will see it again shortly.

Behold, I think it is new.

All the streets are nice and touristy.

This is the rather uninspiringly named, national intangible heritage centre. Mainly hanboks I believe.

If there is a hill to climb up, I will find it.

On top of the hill is something actually old, they ask you to take your shoes off if you want to walk on it, Omokdae appears to be it's name.

View of hanok roofing methods.

Not too busy yet even at lunch time, some cafes only open after lunch.

Most of the streets are full of air bnb's, apparently Jeonju is the 3rd most visited city in Korea after Seoul and Busan, all because of this snail certified area.

There are many places to get an ice cream.

All the streets are well manicured.

Just over the river is the heavily advertised, Seohakdong Art Village. This is a bit hard to photograph, but there are a lot of places selling hand made ear rings and related things tourists need.

My last stop of the day, the also nearby Nambu market. A strange mix of new and old. There were some rather modern cafes, and a youth zone.

But also the traditional Korean style market where leafy produce bakes in the sun next to pig heads.

Then I shot a few dogs and decided I had seen enough.

A Homeplus. This is another version of Korean wal-mart, I wandered over thinking it looked a bit run down. Abandoned.

This is Jeonju city hall. Note the ancient historic temple shrine they have craned up into the middle of the building.

I headed to the market, which has a convenient drain for fish guts disposal.

The inside of the market was surprisingly spacious.

Spacious until they pile vegetables up the middle of where you are expected to walk.

The other night I mentioned movie street, this is it. The Jeonju film festival is heavily promoted. Golden footprints are placed around the area.

Next I wandered down to the river to find out if these rocks are slippery. They are not.

A mega church! Jesus! Pope!

And now that I was full of salvation, poor person tofu stew. It was adequate.
Tomorrow, hiking day, shorter hike again I think.

Here is my bus stop. Well not the bus stop I originally planned, my replacement bus stop, last stop on route 110.

You have to separate rubbish into 10 different bins. Good luck. In Australia and the UK there is a riot currently over introducing a 3rd bin.

Hard waste collection, anyone want a Yamaha keyboard?

The wrong path lead me up through farm lands. Lots of dogs barking.

After doubling back at the dead end, here is where I found an actual trail. Well I still was not quite sure at this point, but if you are looking to do this hike, I guess, you need to find this area behind the bus stop.

Once I got to here, I knew it was the right trail. Almost looks like Autumn too.

As it turns out, this is a fortress wall, and so it is indeed the right trail. I made another brief detour to walk along the wall, but the trees were all too tall so there was no view.

Now I am finally heading in the correct direction.

This was the trail for nearly the whole hike. Shady, but no view.

As you can see.. it looked very similar for a lot of the way. Not too rocky.

First view. Jeonju is bigger than I thought.

That ridge is the direction I had come from.

Almost at the top. Blossom time.

The summit has a helicopter landing area, but almost no view due to the trees.

I think the peak 2/3 to the right of this photo was my original destination today, but I was going to climb it from the far side. Bus said no.

Time to head back down.

Not a lot of staircases today, this one near the summit was probably the only one.

On the way down I walked along the bottom of the wall instead of along the top.

After the earlier bus debacle, I was thrilled to get back to the bus stop and find a personal electric chariot waiting for me.
So in summary, I managed once again to make a short hike into a somewhat longer one.

One of the many museums in the area, no English.

Now for some photos with my camera pointing into the setting sun, which always makes for the best photos.

I waited around to make it look quieter than it was, especially waiting for the stupid golf carts to get out of the frame.

Not bad.

OK, last one of the hanok village is a fitting end, a giant multi level cafe, this one has no windows, you can fall right out of it.

Now for my dinner. All this and more for about $10. So far we have green onions and bean shoots on hot plate number 1, and a saucepan of a few mushrooms and green things on top of hot plate number 2. The lettuce leaves are for making parcels of bulgogi, once the actual bulgogi arrives. The new to me thing is inside the plastic in the ashtray, I thought I maybe had to make a pizza as it is just a ball of dough.

The actual pork bulgoi was pre cooked elsewhere and brought to my hot plate to continue cooking, I ate some of it wrapped in lettuce, but mainly just ate it off the hot plate.

And now the piece de resistance, while I was eating my bulgogi, the boss lady came over, put on disposable plastic gloves, and peeled bits of dough off and put them in the soup pot. Here on the left, you can see the result, plain boiled dough. My research tells me it is called Sujebi. It tasted exactly like if you were to mix flour and water and eat it. I guess it is a rice substitute.
Tomorrow, back to Seoul, but don't worry, I will be on the other side of Seoul, for 7 more nights!

The Jeonju station is nothing to write home about. But there is a lot of construction going on nearby.

Perhaps this is the new Jeonju station?

Back inside the current station and it has a few shops, it is not too busy now but when I first arrived it was overflowing, hence why I went off for a walk around the block dragging my suitcase.

As I was early, I decided to have the Jeonju speciality - this sort of a cake. They are available everywhere in many flavours, including the train station. The name seems to just be, Jeonju pie. They are basically, a wagon wheel, complete with strawberry jam in the middle. So there you go, sometime in pre history, mr wagon came to Jeonju and stole the idea. Also that's my pants.

The inside of the train is the inside of the train. I have the seat on it's own in first class again. No more bullet trains on this trip.

Behold the laundromat. I purchased a card that you cannot refund because I could not find the coin changer machine... then once I had purchased the card I found the coin changer machine. So I had about $5 left on the card that can only be used at this specific store. I tried to give the card away to 2 different people, they looked horrified and left the store rather than talk to me, so if you need $5 laudromat credit, there is a card on the table.

Now for the exciting hotel room photos, and I have outdone myself. This is Hotel Eliena in Seoul Gangnam. As far as I can tell it is not part of a chain. I booked a year ago for under $100 a night, it is now 3x that price. Room is huge.

The main fault is that the work desk, part of which is showing on the bottom left here, has no power points, I now have a power cord running across the floor.

The bathroom is marble.

But the best feature, despite the very dirty window, is my 10th floor window. Check out the view and the great clouds. Another cloud shot coming up this evening.

Before I headed out, just the clouds outside of my dirty hotel window. If I was a cloudologist I would know the name of this sort of cloud, Rhinonombulis, that will do.

I do recall walking past, but not going into this Hyundai department store in the past, so I did that again. Edge of cool clouds visible.

The river, sans cloud. Still, good light for photos.

I can walk over this bridge, not tonight.

Instead I went down to the rubbish layer.

These are not boats anymore. They may never have been actual boats, the next one as you shall see definitely is not. It is filled with restaurants and a convenience store.

A rugby field, rugby is big in Japan now so why not Korea?

This one was definitely never a boat. Like I said, they recently tried to re-launch a ferry service across the river, a bit like the star ferry in Hong Kong, but no one went on it so it closed down again.

Time to hang out under a bridge.

I skirted the edges of the colourful streets of Gangnam, I am sure they will be seen again on another night.

The nearby market is bigger than I remember, and still going into the night.

Finally, it was time for a late dinner of tofu poke bowl, with chick peas AND hummus. Delicious.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, on a Saturday, I need to pick a less busy hike.