Spice up your life

Phew, the end of a weekend. I feel like I have been on the go since Wednesday. I went out on Wednesday night for my usual dak galbi (spicy chicken barbecue) feast with Tania and Renee. I might have popped to Bumpin for a quick half after but I was home early because I was up early on Thursday morning. I had said that I would help the school for a couple of hours, they had a visiting group of seven year olds to entertain. I danced, sang, played about and pretended to work in a hamburger store all morning. It was exhausting and only once I had finished did my working day start. So, somehow it seemed only fair that I go out that night. And it was hardly my fault if there were other people in the bar who convinced me to stay out!

Crawling into bed around four-ish, I set the alarm to wake me up early the next day as I was meeting a mate in the morning before work. By the end of Friday I was knackered but had to go out to a birthday party that night. No problem, I could have a lie in on Saturday.

But I had forgotten, during the blissfully quiet two month winter vacation, that the elementary school across the road from me would be waking me up at the crack of dawn with the Korean National Anthem since the little darlings were back at school. I gritted my teeth throughout their morning exercises and by the time they had finished it was time to get to the bus terminal where I was meeting Tania.

And the reason that I was meeting her??? Because we were going to Chuncheon, the home of dak galbi, for a weekend of chicken feasting. The bus ride from Gangneung takes around two hours and it is an awesome ride through the snow covered mountains. The view was worth the trip alone but things got even better when we arrived in the city just in time for dinner. We went to Dak Galbi Street in Myeongdong. It is literally dak galbi restaurant after dak galbi restaurant- we were in heaven!

We were spoilt for choice but in the end had no choice as the ajummas stood outside their restaurants and were practically clawing at us to get us in to eat. We gave in and had some great food at Joong Ang dak galbi which claims to be the original dak galbi restaurant. We ate and ate. In fact that was about all we did that night.

We did go out to a bar but after two drinks we were both done in though they were very pretty drinks!

We got up this morning and went for a walk by the lake but it was so cold that we ended up taking refuge in another dak galbi restaurant and staying for lunch. Well, I say that we took refuge, by that I mean that we got into a taxi and asked them to take us to dak galbi street asap! After that we came home to Gangneung.

As far as I can see Chuncheon is in a beautiful location with some great scenery. And the dak galbi restaurants are all that you could imagine. The other reason for going there is if you are a fan of the Korean drama 'Winter Sonata'. There are images from the show all over the city, nestled amongst the Christmas decorations- which are inexplicably still everywhere. It was a good weekend but no more chicken for me... at least not until this Wednesday!