Korean Wine Country

For the past week we have had the pleasure of D's mom Miriam staying with us. She flew in last Thursday after a long flight from Regina Saskatchewan. Miriam and I did some touring around Ulsan on Friday and then went and helped hand out candy to the foreigner kids on the compound. We brought Arnold over in his dragon costume and all the kids loved him! Saturday we went to Ganjeolgot, the first place the sun rises on the NE Asian continent and then went to the Seongnamsa temple. It was a busy day finished off with some Korean BBQ. On Sunday we decided it would be a good idea to head out to see the Paraeso waterfall and to take some pictures of the changing leaves. Unfortunately we weren't the only ones with this idea as traffic was backed up all the way up to the falls. We decided to abandon the car and walk up the mountain to get to the falls. The hike was about 5km uphill but we made it safe and sound and the view was worth it.

After a couple more days of sightseeing in Gyeongju, watching the Melbourne cup, and getting manicures Miriam has forgotten about work is truly relaxing and enjoying her holiday. Today we decided to be adventurous and attempt to find the only winery I think Korea has to offer, which is about 60km away. The wine is not made from grapes but from persimmons, a lovely little orange fruit that grows here.
After a quick stop at Starbucks we were on our way with the Garmin directing us towards the city of Cheongdo. The drive was beautiful as the leaves on the trees here are finally changing colours. After a short 60km drive we arrived in the city and decided to walk around to do some sightseeing. Cheongdo is famous for their persimmons and their bull fights. These are not the bull fights most people are used to but they are fights were two bulls enter a ring and only one leaves.
Please keep in mind that Miriam and I have no idea how to get to this particular wine tunnel so we drove around for quite awhile looking for it. I had a crappy map that I had drawn from the website and it was getting us nowhere fast. I was typing in different things into the GPS but nothing was working until Miriam suggested that we type in the Korean word for wine, which is pronounce wa-in and there is was "wa-in tunnel". We hit go and the GPS took us on a twisty and turvy direction through thin streets and construction zones. So after an adventurous trip we made it to the elusive wine tunnel!
Now Miriam and I had no expectations as to what this tunnel was going to be like. I thought that it would be some tiny little tunnel with a few bottles of wine in it and boy were we wrong! The tunnel was amazing! This tunnel used to be a train tunnel that was used to transport material for the Korean war but now it is just used as wine storage.
We had the opportunity to sample some of the wine, which was very sweet but still tasty, it might give you a nasty hangover if you drank too much of it though. There was also a section in the tunnel where you could buy cheese and crackers and enjoy a glass of wine. Like these fine people were doing.
So we walked around a bit more and of course bought some wine we decided to head back to Ulsan.

So needless to say we had another great day touring around.
Here is D and Miriam enjoying a glass of the wine we brought home


For more pictures go to our Picasa account: http://picasaweb.google.com/dennis.blackwell/17CheongdoWine#

Tomorrow afternoon my mom and Aunt Lorna arrive from Japan. All of us are heading to Seoul this weekend to tour around and then heading back on the train from Seoul to Ulsan. Should be a great time and I will update when we return next week!

Miss you all,
Love,
J