Driving in Korea is a pretty stressful experience. It's like what would happen if the aggressive Massachusetts drivers suddenly all decided that all laws were now merely suggestions and they could drive with impunity. People seemingly ignore red STOPlights (not stop signs, mind you) and make left or right turns, or even just go straight through after they come to a rolling stop to look around the intersection. It also seems like people will not stop for you if you're a pedestrian, so you have to be careful. Nowhere to park? No problem! Just stop in the right-most lane and park your car there, I'm sure nobody will mind. Everyone seems to be as impatient and pushy in their cars as they are in person (see previous entry re: frustration there). Cars will honk or squeeze around you in situations where most people in the US would just wait the 10 seconds until you move. So while I am impressed that I've only seen one accident in my entire time here and everyone is able to drive really close to each other and squeeze through spaces I would have thought impossible (inches of clearance) while going normal speeds, it makes for a very stressful driving experience.
After driving around for a while trying to find our bed and breakfast motel (which is pretty small at only 6 rooms and not really in the city) we found it via a combination of the GPS navigation in the car that couldn't find the address to the B&B, my wife's phone that had a map with the address, and my phone that could show where we were on a map. We had missed a small side road turnoff that looked more like a driveway leading up a big hill into a newly paved road where there was a big cement truck and a construction vehicle blocking the only way to the B&B, whom we had to call and they sent an employee out to tell the vehicles to move so we could get in (which was rather tricky on this small road where one side had a drop of ~10 feet down the side of the hill).
We checked in and relaxed for a while; it's a really modern design (see the hallway in picture 2). Seems to be very new construction. Apparently some heavy rains had washed away some of their steps? So they were fixing that, thus the cement truck. We ate a light early dinner from the B&B's cafe (steak sandwich, see picture 3).
As we were about to head out to the local e-mart, the main employee (so far we had only seen 2 people who worked there, the main employee who checked us in and ran the cafe and someone who was cooking in the cafe) told us that the owner's husband was an artist and had a gallery with one of his works in the building next door. So we took a look at it while he explained and bragged for a good 10 minutes at least. Picture 4 shows his piece, which was three bronze sculptures that had been welded together from small triangles or squares and then there was a light inside to cast light and shadows all around the room. Pretty neat effect.
Afterwards we headed to e-mart and picked up various snacks and supplies - different kinds of cup ramen, some drinks, chips, and kimbap (rice and veggies and meat rolled up like sushi). They don't bag your purchases like they do in the States and you have to pay for bags so when we were checking out and they said we couldn't use the basket to bring our stuff to the car we were thinking uh oh what do we do now? Fortunately for us we just happened to have bought a new backpack for me since my old one is falling apart, so we stuffed most of the groceries in there!
We ate ramen and kimbap for dinner. My ramen was supposed to be like jjajangmyun (noodles with black bean sauce) and I thought they captured that flavor pretty well in ramen form. The kimbap was sooo good. And it was super cheap. I don't know why it was so cheap, but if they had stuff like this in grocery stores in the States I would definitely get it a lot. Even Hmart's kimbap is not very good compared to this one.
After a nice dinner on our room's balcony we just vegged out for a while before falling asleep.
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