From Suwon's fortress to Daegu's dog soup

November 10 Wednesday
Mary has been making strides in learning Korean and the people are delighted, and sometimes amused, to talk with her. Using a course loaded onto her Ipod, she hears the Korean, and writes memory clues to help remember it. While she studied this morning, I walked briskly up to see the massive gate at the far north end of Suwon's fortress wall. (Our guest house is near the south end's huge entrance gate and at night we see the gate, observation towers, and fire-beacon platforms magically lit.)
I hiked along the wall, looked out on the modern city, its rectangular buildings so different from the historic fortress, then strode along the Suwoncheon (river) back to our guest house.

We took a taxi to Suwon station and train to Daegu - past autumn forest hills, water standing in rice paddies, a cultivated pond of what appeared to be lotus root, acres of greenhouses (some open so I could see the smoothly manicured soil, others assembled with metal hoops, irrigation sprinklers, and translucent covering). We saw traditional houses, some with bright blue roofs. Our train crossed 3 rivers on bridges. We discovered that seats are assigned when a Korean man approached us pointing to his ticket; we obligingly moved; he took pains to brush the seat off completely!
Our hotel's name is romanized either Lausanne or Rozan; either way, the pamphlets outside and poster inside, up only at night, are evidence it is a “love hotel.” But, unlike in Suwon, we have the luxury of sheets.
Walking out to a restaurant about 10 minutes away, we had to match the Korean characters in the sign to the notation in our guidebook, as well as the menu, as there was no English in either. We tried their goat and their dog soup, each ordering a bowl of one or the other, probably for the one and only time, (the goat meat was tough and the dog meat mercifully sparse in that soup). Then walking back, we stopped into “Home Plus” a huge supermarket plus department store with food courts offering everything from Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Greek cuisine, and pasta to Krazee Burgers. Tiny ice cream cones were $4-5, but we had decided on ice cream to quench the fire in our mouths from dinner; Mary had the inspired idea that we buy a package from the grocery section. Passing up the green tea ice cream, we chose “Goo-Goo” – chocolate covered peanuts, caramel, chocolate and marshmallow ice cream... and we ate up the whole liter of it!

written by

chertop on November 10, 2010 from Taegu, South Korea

from the travel blog: Japan and South Korea 2010

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