Gyeongu Cherry Blossoms, all you can eat.

Two Saturdays ago the English cafe where Lindie, Albert, Anriette and I study Korean went on a field trip to Gyeongu to see the cherry blossoms.  We decided to go along, because, after all, they are pretty cool people, and you might as well see cherry blossoms while you're in Korea, but we had no idea what was in store for us. . .

The train left our little town at 8:50am Sunday morning, and the three of us where there by the skin of our teeth.  But we made it, at least Anriette, Albert and I did.  Poor Lindie and Rob missed the train as it stopped by their house and they had to take a later one.  We got to Gyeongu a little before 10 and walked across the parking lot to rent bikes, after we were all divided up into teams.  I'm not sure what we actually were expecting, but for some reason it really surprised me how many people came in our group, we probably had thirty people or so, so Jonah divided everyone up, teams of three, one foreigner and two Koreans to a group.  I was in his group with a sweet little girl named Tika.  Then we went to rent our best friends for the day.

We had a little time, our groups, because we were waiting for Lindie and Rob, so we rode around the parking lot, grabbed some drinks for the road, and got acquainted with our new team members.

Albert and Anriette.  She is also from South Africa and is awesome.  She's working at Albert's school with him now and lives about three feet away from me.  More on her later. . .

I traded my bike in for one with a basket which may have been the best decision I've made in my entire actual life.  Oh, and here's my new hair.  What do you think?

A lot of the group gave up waiting for people they didn't even know and started out ahead of us.  We still had a rather large posse.  

We had no idea what was about to happen to us and our poor muscles. . . 

 Finally, Lindie and Rob arrived, we got them some bikes and were off like a shot.  I had no idea where we were going, I thought there was like a festival but I don't know if it actually had a single location or if it was just sort of a city wide thing.  If it had an actual location it was no where near close to where we were, so off we went.

Cherry blossom streets. . .

My team mate Tika, who was in the middle of saying "Be careful" because I was turning around to take a photo from the back of my bike.

Cherry blossoms

Cherry blossoms and I think golden rod or golden bells. . .

Lindie, Rob, and the rest of the team.  This is the view from the back of my head.

Riding next to a lovely park.  

It's a little difficult to take pictures while you're riding a bike. . .

Rob and Anriette.  Rob was dominating this whole bike yourself to death thing.

Tommy, sweet Korean guy, either trying to photo bomb or point something out to me in the photo.

Sometimes I felt like I was in that jogging/photography group that was in Yes Man.  But it's pretty, isn't it?

This was one place that we stopped (very briefly) a lovely park with cherry blossom trees surrounding the lake.

Beautiful day, too.  

In the distance you can see Gyeongu World.

Lots and lots of cherry blossoms :-)

Lindie, Rob, Albert and I.  Rob is crazy.  :-)

Swan boat anyone?

 We stopped at this park and got some lunch, which was good, because we had already been riding for a couple of hours and we were ready to give our bums a break.  It is a beautiful place, and they have cherry blossom trees planted every maybe seven or eight feet apart for as far as you can see along every road, so it was definitely a city in bloom.  We went with some of the group to a little place and got some soup.  Jonah was with me and remembered that I can't handle spicy things so he ordered me a nice, mild tofu-y soup.

Anriette and her giant shrimp soup friend.

 It wasn't long (at all) before we were off again.  But we insisted on a break long enough to take a photo.  It was a beautiful day, we were really fortunate, it was warm but not hot, and there was a nice breeze most of the day.

Two groups that refused to part.  We were on our way to a famous tomb.

Another well-deserved break by a beautiful lake.

One of my students told me this week that the three most famous MLB hats in Korea are Boston, New York, and Detroit.  Anriette's partner, and new Korean teacher, had this one, so I stole it for a photo.  I'm getting one here.  That's all there is to it.

 We took a pit stop at a little temple on our way to the tomb.  Another really well deserved break from the bikes.  We were basically riding standing up at this point.  I think this was our approaching our fifth hour riding.

A giant bell at the front of the temple complex.  You could ring it for a dollar.

A cute gargoyle.  

A little bit about where we were.

Anriette being awesome.

Anriette posing with one of the gargoyles.

There was money from all over the world here on this statue, but I didn't see any American money.  Nor did I leave any.

We stopped here because Ji Young said there was so much color.  So, this is us with Tika :-)

. . .and Ji Young.

Pretty good place here :-)

It was actually a really busy place, and as hard as it was to ride bikes for so long, we got to see a lot more than people in cars did.  It was really congested.

Ji Young riding a very scary path. . .it doesn't look terribly narrow, but when you're riding on it, it feels like a razor's edge.

Getting a little sunburned now. . . :-)

We met up with Lindie, Albert and Rob at a palace and explored it for a while.  We parked the bikes and walked  the grounds.  It was beautiful.

Tika and I.

One of the views from the place where the king went for relaxation. :-)

Not bad, huh? :-)

We tried to take a quick nap in the grass, Lindie, Albert, Tika and I, and I tried to take a photo, but it didn't really work.

Viciously hungry koi in the lake.

We were here for maybe about half an hour walking around and looking at things.  Then we had to leave to meet the rest of the group at a museum.  My group never actually ended up making it to the tomb but what we did see was really lovely.  :-)

We made it!  The museum is in the background, really neat place, lots of really cool things to see. . .that I wasn't allowed to take pictures of.

From the museum balcony.

Beautiful grounds.

This, I was told, is very famous.  So, I'm sharing it with you.

This one as well.

We were so exhausted.  I can't even tell you.  We walked through the museum and saw everything, then we ran out to get some ice cream.  That was the best ice cream in the whole world.  :-)

The Korean flag against cherry blossoms.

 We left the museum at about 5 or so and headed back to the train station. . .the long way.  :-)  The whole group was together now, so we were quite an impressive bicycle gang for sure.

Sun set with kites.

Our rag tag gang.  :)

Cherry blossoms on the way back to the train station.  A famous grave yard to the right.

Cherry blossom day.  :-)

 It was dusk by the time we got to the train station.  We rode from 10 in the morning to 7 that night.  Our train was scheduled to leave at I think 7:30 or so, but we had to have the bikes back by 7.  On the way there we had standing tickets, and all of us were scared that we would have to stand the whole way back, but fortunately they managed to find seats for all of us, and I, for one, fell soundly asleep almost as soon as we started moving.

When we got back to our town the group wanted to go out and get something to eat.  Albert, Anriette and I wanted to limp back home and have McDonald's deliver some dinner right to our beds, so that's exactly what we did.  That was the best bacon tomato delux combo I had ever had in my life.  :-)

It was a lovely day, but we were barely able to sit for days and days.  I was supposed to go to the gym with Jean and Ji Young the next morning, but we both cancelled on him and got some rest.

I got a nice sunburn, which my students thought was about the most amusing thing they had ever seen.  One of them asked me if I had spray painted my arms.  It wasn't even that bad, but sunburn must not be so common among people without Scottish blood.  :-)

So, that was two Sundays ago.   :-)

Thanks for reading!