Busan

I've had a bit of cabin fever lately. We haven't traveled in a while. Dustin has been crazy busy with work so our weekends seem to fly pretty quick. With less than a year overseas we want to knock as much off our local bucket list as possible. Enter South Korea. Just a quick hop across the Sea of Japan and we could explore Busan, the second largest city.

We drove to Fukuoka airport and a forty-five minute flight later we arrived in South Korea. Busan is a beautiful port city and is home to Korea's largest beach, longest river, and the world's largest department store. I like superlatives, so we had to visit them all.

After a taxi ride through Saturday afternoon traffic, we arrived at our hotel. We were twenty minutes early for check-in so we decided to walk around the surrounding area.

Tons of fresh fruits, vegetables (including the LARGEST cabbage I have ever seen), fish, dried beans, peppers, real cinnamon, home goods, and clothes. The smells were amazing!

It started with a picture...

...and ended with over 1,000! Exhausted and teary-eyed, we are home safe from a week in China. Seven planes in seven days is my limit. We had quite an adventure - nineteen hour days, pollution, frog legs - that I cannot wait to share.

I used Pinterest to create our China itinerary. Pinterest with a dash of TripAdvisor. I am the planner of this adventuring duo, but I was feeling some pressure to make this trip spectacular. It may be the only time we make it to the Communist country so I wanted to make sure it knocked my socks off. But gave them back, of course. I like my socks.

I enlisted Dustin to find activities that he would be interested in doing. And that's when he found the picture.


From Pinterest

The "Bridge of Immortals" in Huangshan, China. We decided immediately that we had to see this area and thus it created our travel itinerary. Unfortunately Huangshan is in southern China and is not near any of the major cities. After a few days of trying to sort out the logistics of traveling domestically I was seriously considering scrapping the whole idea.

Dustin and I rarely do guided tours. We love the flexibility of being able to travel at our own speed. We also love exploring cities on foot. So many of our discoveries have been while wandering around (sometimes lost!) in the evenings or between tourist sights. After building the itinerary, I decided to use a tour company that would provide an English-speaking guide during our travels. My Mandarin consists of foul language learned from Firefly so having an intermediary sealed the deal. Price tag: a steal!

So off to China we go..... not. We were scheduled to fly early Saturday morning, but late Friday we discovered our flight was being delayed. Very very last minute we bought different tickets so we would make our international connecting flight.

After twelve hours of traveling and some awesome airplane food (Thanks, Delta!) we arrived in Beijing. Our tour guide, Sherry, met us at the airport with our driver and swiftly tucked us in to our hotel for the night. I was quite exhausted.

A bit unnerving...

In our hotel we found some interesting things. The bathroom had a scale. In fact, every hotel we stayed at in country had a scale. Additionally, we found the two of the above mask in each room. In case of...????

I pay for adventure.

I'm weird when it comes to money. Like really weird. I will spend weeks planning out the financial details of our vacations. Every vacation comes with its own budget on an Excel spreadsheet. Really. (Is this any surprise though? I work in DoD Budgeting and love it.) But back to my vacay. And being weird.

I will spend hours finding the best price out there. Hours. Over many weeks. I read reviews on airlines and hotels. I check online sites (all of them) every day and sometimes multiple times in a day just to see what rates they have going on. I'm quite obsessive when it comes to getting the best deal.

So after all this time finding the best deal for vacation, it is quite weird that I have no problem handing over $15 for an umbrella'd drink by the pool. Or $100 to ride a crazy carnival contraption that looks very much like a death trap. And I will gladly cough up museum entry fees and tips for good street performers.

I pay for adventure.

When I look back at the thousands of pictures from our vacations and experiences I don't feel bad that I'm sitting on a six year old couch scuffed with rawhide from one of Zero's bones. I don't regret driving an older car and using a paper map. I'm happy to hold down my kitchen mixer arm because the latch broke. I'm not sorry that I have mixed glasses, a few chipped plates, and unmatched Tupperware. Really.

I'm glad I have memories of exciting adventures and thrilling escapes. The rest is just.... stuff.

Arashiyama

After visiting the monkey park I saw something on the map that read "Bamboo Street." Curious we walked that direction and found a long pathway surrounded by bamboo. It was fall when we visited so the colors weren't as vibrant as some of the pictures I have seen online. It was still a beautiful sight.

Along the way back to the train station we came across this terrifying ninja!

The crowds parted for him to come through. He was that intense. :)
As we waited for our train to take us back to the city I found a teeny tiny dot on the map that said "foot bath". After a little confusion as to where it was we found this great natural hot spring to wash our feet. It was just a small shack between train tracks off the main area.

Rinse first!

Free towel

Obligatory Foot Picture

The water was wonderful! It was a nice respite after climbing Iwatayama mountain and walking all day. After drying off our footsies we bought Mitarashi dango. These are small balls of mochi dipped in a sweet soy sauce glaze and sprinkled with peanuts. Mochi is made by pounding rice to make a gluten-like paste. The mochi is then shaped into balls and boiled. The soy sauce glaze was very sweet and reminded me of a less-viscous honey. It was delicious!

 

 

I loved them so much that I found a recipe online that even I can follow. (I haven't grilled them yet. I like the boiled taste.) The whole day was very relaxed and a nice change from hundreds of temples and shrines.

Just get on with it already!

Our first morning in Kyoto did not start out the way we had planned. The city is laid out in a grid pattern which makes understanding where you are and where you need to go pretty easy. North is uphill. During my research I was shocked to discover Kyoto does not have a thriving subway line. Instead the city's public transportation is an intricate web of buses. (Okay, to be honest, Kyoto does have subway lines. Two to be exact. One goes north/south and the other goes east/west. Neither of which had stops near any of our destinations.)

The city does offer an all-day bus pass for 500 yen (about $6) that will take you anywhere in the city central. Destinations outside the city required a little extra money.

Finding the right color, letter, and number! We can do this!

Our tourist office on base did not have a map of the bus stops. Neither did our not so fabulous hotel.  I did have a map of the roads in the city and we had walked from the train station the night before so we set off in a semi-familiar direction...

...and came across a business man peeing on the side of the building. Not in an alley. Just dropped his fly and peed between a barber shop and an apartment building. It was an not an auspicious start to our Kyoto vacation.

Bus Depot

Finally we made it to the bus area of Kyoto station, purchased passes, and mapped the shortest way to our destinations. Finally we were ready to start sightseeing! Or at least doing something more than riding buses around the city. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. There's a Starbucks.

Check out my smaller-than-small size! Take that Trenta!

Now we live in the Japanese version of the country. Really. So when we come across stores only in big ol' cities we just have to visit. So we did. There were so many nationalities represented (and come to think of it.. not many Japanese) that it became a game to try to figure out where each group was from. Oh, Starbucks. A glowing beacon in all the kangi, hirigana, and katakana.

"Attention all tourists. Meet and convene here before embarking on our confusing city. We are your last respite!"

Ahh. A little piece of home in this strange (yet exciting) country. Now to the temples and shrines - oh my!

Dinner, Day 3

For our last dinner at the pension we were treated to Italian cuisine. Based on our phenomenal (and long!) meal the day before we were ready for the many courses to come. Here we go!

For the first course we had scallops and mussels with a light cucumber and tomato salsa. The white sauce around it was creamy with a little bit of dill. I've never liked scallops and have stayed away from anything in a shell, but I tried both. They were tasty!

Next came a generous serving of pasta with a fresh cream sauce. There was parsley and chunks of smoked ham throughout. This was my favorite part of the meal.

Unfortunately we both dug right into the next course without taking a picture. We had small pieces of crunchy sea bass on a bed of vegetables. We didn't realize we hadn't gotten a picture until the plate was being whisked (empty) away!

Course 4 was a tasty salad with sesame dressing. This time we had slices of radish. He brought back the waffle-cut cucumber for me after I made a comment the night before.

After the salad came pork tenderloin with a sweet brown gravy. The sweet onion made a repeat performance with a crisp asparagus (cut that day!). He also made a flat sheet of crispy potatoes. Dustin was impressed with these. We tried to explain they were similar to what we call hash browns, but gave up when the translation failed. I was so full from all the other plates (I mean, seriously, this is a lot of food!) that I gave my meat to Dustin and just finished the vegetables. I had to save room for...

DESSERT! So to start in the bottom corner we have raspberry sorbet. This is Dustin's go-to sweet treat at home so he was super excited to see it here. Next to that is a small slice of white cheesecake. Again to the right is an almond cake with fresh strawberry and kiwi. In the glass was tasty panna cotta with raspberry syrup. He also spun some sugar for me so I could experience the cotton candy/ campfire marshmallow again.

What a phenomenal meal! We were so full we didn't move for a full hour afterwards!

Mt Aso, Day 3

On our last day in Minami Aso we wanted to explore the mountains surrounding the caldera. We had spent so much time in the middle on the volcanoes that we hadn't seen the area from the other side of the valley. Our host recommended we start at a tourist center about twenty minutes away. He drove us there and helped us rent electric bicycles.

The man working at the tourist center thought it was very funny that we hiked up Mt. Aso by accident. He couldn't stop laughing. He was very nice and gave us recommendations on routes to travel that wouldn't be too steep. He let us rent the bicycles for free. Our host explained all the picture-taking for my blog. He hopes you will all come visit him in Minami Aso. He will have bicycles ready for all.

Back up into the clouds

We rode out and started climbing the mountains. Even with the help of the electric bicycles it was still a tough ride! Very steep!

Along the way we passed some falls that were worth stopping. If only to stretch our legs for a little bit.

We reached the top and were able to see the volcanic rock formations. I wish it had been a bit clearer, but then it would have been uncomfortably hot.



Dustin's battery died and these bicycles are heavy so we decided to head down the mountain and get some lunch. The local area is known for their buckwheat soba noodles. So we decided to try our hand at making the famed noodles.

The building was circular and had windows all along the outside. In the center was the prep area that we worked in.

"Add water here!"

Kneed the dough

Must not have been doing it right...

Roll it out to make a perfect square

Don't want to lose a finger

FEAST!

Our noodles weren't very even - some were fat and some were slivers. They tasted good for our first time making soba!

Zachary, remember your marble soda we had during our visit to California? They actually do have it in Japan! It was quite tasty again!

Next we set out on a long walk back towards the pension. Along the way we wanted to see the Big Cherry Blossom Tree. In the spring, it is a sight to see (as the pictures around the pension will show). During our visit the cherry blossoms had already departed, but it was still worth walking to see the 400 year old tree.

What a day! It was beautiful once the clouds cleared out.

Back at the pension our host asked us to put a pin in the map where we were from. He had many pins from Europe and the United States.

I would just like to point out that we were the second pin to be put in for Chattanooga, Tennessee!

How many more can we add to the map? :)

Mt. Aso, Day 1

Day 1: On the first day we were there we wasted no time visiting the top of the mountain to see the craters. Our host did not recommend hiking to the top as the trail is labelled "difficult." Instead he drove us to a neighboring train station where we caught a bus to the top of the mountain.

Trying to finish Wise Man's Fear

Dustin has been trying very hard to finish his book so he read for most of the bus ride. I couldn't keep my eyes off the mountains, flowers, and a few straggling cherry blossoms.

Welcome Center/ Bus Station/ Bottom of Ropeway

The bus dropped us off at about halfway up the mountain. There is a welcome center with ice cream and local gifts. It also is the starting point of a ropeway. We decided not to take the ropeway to the top of the crater. We were there to enjoy the trails! It was an overcast day, but the rain held off. So up the mountain we climbed.

Heading into the clouds

Brace against the wind!

The trail up the mountain is paved to the crater. We were the only people walking to the top. Most  took the ropeway or were taking taxis from the welcome center. It was very windy at the top of the mountain by the crater. The clouds were blowing through so quickly that it felt like rain on my cheeks.

Closed Area

Mt Aso has many craters that have developed over the years. The volcano is still active and often parts of the observing area are closed. In the above picture there is a huge crater on the other side of the small hill. Unfortunately when we visited the area was closed because of poisonous gases.

At the top of the crater - in a cloud

We stayed at the top for about an hour catching glimpses of the crater and sulfur lake in between clouds. Finally a big cloud rolled in that didn't seem to be moving. So we kept walking along the path.

Sulfur!

At the top of the ropeway was a small stand selling chunks of sulfur and pumice stones. In the picture you can see the crater lake on a clear day.

"My, this is surprisingly heavy!"

Dustin really wanted some sulfur (I guess so he won't have to blame his toots on the dog!). We bought a small piece and a few pumice stones. The man running the shop gave me a free pumice stone. I'm guessing because I'm a tourist and not because I have scaly skin!

Thick clouds!

On the way back down we took a picture of Mt. Nakadake, the mountain we would climb on Day 2!

Mt. Nakadake

Breakfast

We had the most phenomenal breakfasts!

Day 1

 Day 1: Scrambled eggs (from the chicken down the road), fresh salad with sesame dressing, seasoned pork, walnut bread, and a plate of mixed fruit.

Day 2

 Day 2: Eggs (again, fresh that morning), pork, chicken piece, salad with French dressing, walnut bread, and fruit plate.

Daily Fruit Plate w/ fresh cream

Day 3

 Day 3: Potato and egg omlet with local tomato sauce (sweet taste, almost a mix between salsa and marinara), seasoned pork, salad with sesame dressing, pickled broccolini, yeast rolls, and a fresh fruit plate.

Day 4

Day 4: Hash browns with spicy ketchup sauce, fresh salad with Italian dressing, seasoned pork, and a poached egg with a sweet brown sauce.

Each day we had fresh coffee (and the Japanese like it strong!), fresh fruit tea, orange juice, vegetable juice, and fresh spring water. After being home for a few days my Cheerios and hard-boiled eggs just don't taste as good!