Phillip and I have almost finished our visit to Daegu, the 4th largest city in South Korea. We again commend the friendliness of the people of Korea and the beauty of the country.
Cherry blossom season is over. The pink and whte blossoms have given way to green leaves; however, we see other blooms now. These are maroon tulips. I've never seen tulips this color before. On our first full day in Daegu, Sunday the 17th, we walked to Duryu Park, about five blocks from our hotel. The amusement park, called E-World, across the street from the park had a beautifully landscaped entrance and I took this picture there of the maroon tulips. (We didn't go into E-World because the entrance fee was 37,000 won each. It appeared to be the Korean version of Six Flags Over Texas).
We walked around Duryu Park, which appeared from the map to be the largest public park in Daegu. It was a windy day and we had our jackets on.
As we walked, we noticed a kite stuck in a tree. A young family, including a girl of about 4, was trying to get the kite out of the tree.
Here's a close-up of the kite - a Cinderella kite. She's on her side with her head on the left of her blue dress. The father and mother tugged and released the kite string, trying to get the gusty wind to catch the kite to get it off the branch.
The father spoke with a maintenance man and then went after a ladder. While the dad was gone, another man decided to climb the tree to help the mother who was still trying to work the kite free. Unfortunately for the family, this tree-climber guy got it loose from one branch just as a gust of wind took it and wrapped it around another branch.
The father came back with the ladder and was able to grab the tail of the kite and pull it down enough to untie Cinderella from the string. Can you see someone in a blue jacket holding the ladder steady?
And this is Phillip on the lower rungs of the ladder, helping Cinderella thru the branches and handing her to the little girl's mother, waiting below. I knew he would end up helping the family save Cinderella! By the way, the parents rolled the string and kite up, as the winds were gusting too much and I don't think they wanted to save Cinderella a second time. The little girl wasn't upset when the kite was put away. She seemed happy that she still had Cinderella to fly another day.
After the park experience, we walked a few kilometers to eat the gopchang, the grilled pork tripe I described in my previous post. Then, subway time as we wanted to go to a market. We made our way to Bangcheon Market, a fairly small market. Unknown to me when I chose Bancheon, it is bordered by Kim Kwang-Seouk Street. Phillip and I followed the crowds thru the market and everyone ended up on one street with a wall covered in murals.
This street is dedicated to a popular Korean folk singer, Kim Kwang-Seouk, who grew up near the market and who died in 1996. Kinda like a Korean version of Elvis Presley. Murals covered the wall panels and statues and wooden guitars lined the other side of the alley. Many of the visitors stopped to take selfies next to the statues.
On Monday, we visited Seomun Market, one of the three largest markets in the country. We arrived fairly early and I took the above picture of one of the hallways. Trust me, by lunchtime this hall was wall-to-wall with people. The market has many of these hallways and four levels of shopping in the buildings you can see on the sides of the hallways. Clothes, purses, housewares, food, shoes.
This is looking into the sack of cookies we bought from a cookie vendor. Those wafers in the upper left of the picture were the best, buttery and sweet, but not too sweet. We ate this small selection as we walked around the market and we went back and purchased an even bigger bag before we left for the day. The cookie vendor spoke a little English and when we said we were from America, Texas, he knew about Shin Soo Choo. We've only had one person say "cowboy" when we say Texas, and they meant the cattle-type cowboy, not the football team. More people have talked about baseball when we say Texas. They are very proud of their Korean MLB players.
I mentioned the housewares. This is an example of a table that was for sale. A beautiful black lacquer table inlayed with mother of pearl to illustrate a peacock. My camera flash took out some of the purple coloring in the tail, but it was as beautiful as those we saw in the museum. It was the size of an end table, and selling for 360,000 won, about $325 US, but we would pay much more than that if we buy it at home. No, we didn't buy it, but we were certainly tempted.
Today we took the Daegu City Tour Bus. What moves Daegu down on our favorite places list is that the interesting locations are difficult to access. With only three subway lines that intersect downtown, this large city is not traveler-friendly. I do say the City, as the people definitely are traveler-friendly. The Daegu City Tour is an operation that tries to connect visitors with sights. For 5000 won each, we rode a hop on-hop off double-decker bus that stopped at 14 locations around the city. The above picture is of Suseongmot Lake.
The lake had a small island in it with trees that served a nesting places for the huge lake birds, some type of heron. This one tree had about twenty nests with herons flying to and from the island.
Our second stop on the City Tour was at Pyeonghwa Market, not for the market as it was quite small, but for dakdongjib - chicken gizzards. You may have noticed that specialty restaurants set up shop on one street in a city and that street becomes famous. This was indeed chicken gizzard alley. And these were the best chicken gizzards that I've ever eaten (I do order chicken gizzards when I can). The batter was a tempura-type coating and they were cooked to order for us. We had the plain fried and the fried and sauced ones.
The restaurant owner here didn't speak a lick of English, so we just pointed. There were two prices on the menu for the gizzards and we weren't sure what she was going to charge. We were prepared to pay the higher price (20,000 won) and Phillip gave her the 20,000 won, but she gave us 6,000 won in change. This was repated for dinner tonight when we went to a nearby restaurant and had mandu, steamed dumplings, an order of five of them. The price could have 14,000 won as the only English on the menu was that "a box" was 14,000. Phillip held out 14,000 won, but the lady only pulled out 4000 and then gave us 500 won in change. We had actually ordered the cheapest item on her menu and she was not going to take advantage of us.
Two other stories of friendly, helpful people: on the first segment of our Daegu City Tour, the bus was staffed with a middle-aged female tour guide who spoke English. Phillip and I were the only passengers as it was the first tour run of the day. Before we got to our stop, twenty minutes after we boarded, she and Phillip were singing Korean songs together! And my final story... tomorrow we leave Daegu and head for Suwon. I know we will take the train, so I looked up the schedule on my tablet and decided to go ahead and book our tickets because only four KTX trains from here stop at Suwon (most are express to Seoul). The website indicated that I must print and show the voucher when I book on-line. So, we went to the hotel lobby and asked about using their printer. The clerk got on-line on her computer for us, and when she saw that we could only get tickets with a Korean credit card, she got the manager involved. I'm pretty sure he used his personal credit card (we paid him in cash the price of the ticket) and finished making the reservation that the clerk had started. She printed out our voucher and we are ready to go tomorrow. They were so helpful, going beyond what we had asked for or expected from them. Every city, every day, Phillip and I are grateful for the honest, helpful people of this country. And every day, we see something new and beautiful here.
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