Staycation

Early May brings the “golden holidays”—a series of holidays close enough together to make nearly a week off during a lovely time of year.  Last year, we traveled for this holiday.  This year, because of the pandemic, we explored new sites closer to home.

Our goal was to visit places that would not require any public transportation—we had to be able to get there by foot or bike.  There are a lot of cool places to visit around Songdo that fit the bill.

Our first trip was by foot, a five-mile walk each way to a Buddhist temple in Old Songdo, the area that was Songdo before the current Songdo was created from landfill in the Yellow Sea. The walk is pleasant, most of it through a linear park that tracks the canal  separating Songdo from Old Songdo.  Hyeungryunsa temple sits on a hill overlooking both Sondgos.  There has been a temple there for over 600 years, but the original was burnt in the late sixteenth-century, and then torn down and rebuilt in the 1960s and 70s.

The view from the temple is stunning.  The cover photo for this blog post shows it: two large golden Buddhas framed by modern city of Songdo.  In two respects, we visited the temple at just the right time.  First, the grounds are full of Azaleas, which were in full bloom while we were there.  Second, the place seemed to be especially festive on the day we were there: lots of people, and prayer lanterns  everywhere.  It took us a little while to recall that the holiday providing this day off was for Buddha’s birthday!

Our walk had other pleasures.  Old Songdo has a large middle eastern immigrant community, and our favorite middle eastern restaurant, Arabesque.  We enjoyed Korean whimsy, such as a fire station garage door painted with friendly cartoon animals, and Korean optimism, as embodied in one of the many billboards that assert Incheon is a vision wrapped in a dream.

 

We ended the day’s staycation with a lovely sunset seen from our very own apartment living room.

The next day’s trip, on Korea’s Labor Day (May 1), was to Oido, an area we can see from our apartment.  It’s on the other side of an estuary. It would be a short walk, if one could walk on water.  We needed to bike.  Fortunately, there are great bike paths on both sides of the estuary.

Oido is a fishing resort town.  It has a long boardwalk along the estuary, and a carnival atmosphere.  The restaurants along the boardwalk are all fish restaurants.  Teresa, who does not like most fish, kindly indulged my fishtooth.  Koreans, in general, love fish and seafood.  Many were out digging for clams along the tidal coast.  Rent boots and hit the mud.

The last of the golden holidays, Children’s Day, was on a Tuesday.  We worked that Tuesday to prepare for the week ahead.  But we took Monday off to put together nearly a week of holiday, from the previous Thursday to Tuesday.  Korean colleagues drove me to one of the many islands that dot the Korean coast line, this one Jebudo (Teresa did not join us on this trip).  The island is reachable by a road that is only above water when the tide is low.  We had to time our visit to get on and off the island before high tide.  We left around 7:30 am and returned about 12:30 pm, with 20 minutes left before the road would no longer be passable until late afternoon.

Jebudo was the farthest trip during our staycation, about an hour by car.  But Songdo has many pleasant places within short walks or bike rides.  During these golden holidays we also watched the sunset at a park along the Yellow Sea, and then tried a new chicken place with a terrific view of Songdo.

Did we miss going farther afield in Korea, as we did last year?  Absolutely.  But we feel fortunate to live in a place that offers so much to do, see and, not least, eat, so close to home.  We also continue to feel fortunate to live in a country that is handling the pandemic well.  We are looking forward to traveling Korea again this summer.