Last month, Kevin and I headed south on a trip to Nonsan, which was about an hour and a half bus ride from Seoul. Ever since I arrived in Korea in January 2013, I've been aware of these expat tour groups such as WINK (When in Korea) and Adventure Korea that organize day or weekend tours to various places around Korea and cater to English speakers. I've been dying to go on a trip but for one reason or another, never found any that I was particularly interested in. The Nonsan Strawberry Festival, of all things, via WINK ended up being the trip to catch my eye. For only W44,000 ($42) each, Kevin and I received bus transportation to and from the festival, a short tour of nearby mountains and the beautiful Cloud bridge, and were able to pick our own strawberries at an organic strawberry farm. It was an awesome day! I was so happy to see this trip being offered on a Sunday because, as mentioned in previous posts, with Kevin working on Saturdays, Sundays are our only mutual day off so it was a great opportunity to get out together and do something different with the day.
One of the main reasons for my high excitement level for this strawberry adventure is that I've really only travelled within Korea (outside of Seoul) <10 times in the past year and a half. It's always nice to get out of the city.
We had to meet the group all the way the hell out at Yangjae station, near Gangnam, aka far from us, at 7:00 AM. We are about 45 mins by metro from Yangjae so we were up bright and early at 5:30 that morning and out the door by 6:00 am. No thank you. I was extremely excited for the trip, but very not excited for being awake at 5:30 am on a weekend.
We loaded the bus and got moving. There were several pick up spots after ours and we arrived at the Strawberry farm where we'd be picking our own strawberries at 10:00 AM. The original cost of the trip was W34,000 but for an extra W10,000 we could visit this farm and have all we could eat as well as have some strawberries to take home.
Nonsan is where most of Korea's strawberries are grown and it is a primarily agricultural region, also famous for producing rice and ginseng, among lots of other crops. The strawberry farm we went to grew their strawberries inside of green houses and I assume this is how the other farms grow theirs as well, since Korean winters are so harsh and I'm not a farmer but I feel like that's not great for plants.
We entered one of the many "rooms" that the farm had for strawberries and were told we could eat as many as we wanted. There were so many strawberry plants!!!!
Yummmmmm.
There were five long rows of strawberry plants to walk through.
Never-ending rows of strawberries.
It seemed like the strawberries were especially humungous.
We were given these little cups to put the strawberry stems in.
<3
HUGE!
After stuffing our faces for an hour at the farm, we received our containers of strawberries and got back on the bus. After a short five minute drive, we arrived at the festival. It was a pretty small venue with plenty of food tents, things to buy, gimicky strawberry themed objects and mascots to take photos with as well as a sound stage with performances happening throughout the day.
We decided to scope out the scene before deciding what to eat.
Suhtrabelly Pestiballlll
Just a giant strawberry posing with a child while sitting on a tiger.
In this tent, kids were stirring big pots of strawberry concoctions.
Delicious piggy
Giant vat of soup.
While we were wandering past the food tents, we stumbled upon a performance...
Among the items listed on the WINK information page about this festival was Strawberry Makeoli (Korean rice wine). Makeoli is kind of a hit or miss indulgence among expats. You either love it or you hate it and I LOVE it. I was on the look out for strawberry makeoli from the moment I entered the festival. It wasn't hard to find.
We were drinking it straight from the bottle as we walked around the festival. I quickly ripped the label off of it as soon as I started noticing the glares from Koreans as we were walking around drinking instead of doing so in a tent. I try to take advantage of Korea's no open container laws as much as possible but there's always those moments where I feel like I'm being judged for doing so lol
The precioussss
It didn't particularly taste like strawberry. There are definitely makeoli bars that do strawberry makeoli way better.
After downing an entire bottle of makeoli, it was definitely time to eat. We decided on kimbap and fried mandu (dumplings) for lunch. After eating, we bought some strawberry jam and got a caricature drawn before getting back on the bus.
Our final stop before heading home was to Daedun Mountain. It was absolutely stunning. I really liked that they added in the bonus destination because it was something Kevin and I would have never seen or even known about and I think he, in particular, enjoyed it more than the strawberry festival.
We took a trolley car up the mountain and climbed a few stairs at the top to get to the Cloud Bridge and took some pictures.
Kevin got in touch with his inner Disney Princess with a bird that wandered into the cafe at the top of the mountain.
At the top of the mountain
Staircase to Cloud Bridge
On Cloud Bridge! Very shaky bridge. Very long way down.
Kevin decided to walk across to see what was on the other side.
There was a ladder heading up the mountain further but I think it would have ended up taking too long to climb so he headed back across and we caught the next trolley car going down the mountain.
We found these exercise machines in a field at the bottom of the mountain.
It was such a beautiful place, especially with all of the cherry blossoms still in bloom.
Awesome day! It made us even more excited to go on our next group trip two weeks later: Paragliding in Anmyeondo!
