Accidently Climbed a Mountain

20112023

Missing the opportunity to nap on the train, and with Laura feeling under the weather, we slept in till 10am!!!

I updated the blog, and slowly got ready to get a coffee and see if Laura thought she could make it through a day of touring, she was not. So we went back to the hotel and I went out to check out some castles and other various piles of rocks. I went to take the train to the Busan Castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busanjinseong), but I went into the train station on the wrong side, and could not change directions without swiping out and subsequently having to pay to get back in, so I rode the train to the next station. This next station also did not let you change directions without paying, so I waited for the next train and went along to the next one, which did work. I eventually made my way there.

The fortress was built up during the Japanese invasions of the 1590s, it was mostly dismantled in during the Japanese occupation of the early 20th century to build the city around it. Currently it is a park in the neighborhood with all kinds of public exercise equipment. In the middle there is a picture of the light pole, all of the lightpoles had speakers in them, piping smooth jazz all throughout the park. I did make emergency use of the public toilet here, and while it was sub-optimal, it was far from the worst public toilet I have ever had an unwelcome shit at.

I then decided to head to the Jeungsan Japanese Castle, which I believe was a part of the same fortress that the previously mentioned castle was, the placards here were only in Korean so I am unsure what it was all about.

We have been primarily using Googlemaps to get around, as it has the transit system, and addresses/names in English. We also have Kakaomap, which is a korean mapping app, that we can copy+paste the googlemaps address in Korean into, to get accurate walking directions to get there. And Kakaomaps knows every road around here. Kakaomap described the walk from one to the other as only being 1.4km and one set of stairs, and this was my route to get up there...

And here is the view from the top

My fitbit had it clocked at close to 3 miles (4.8km) and 65 floors of stairs. Which means up the hill was equivelant to the Little Si hike in Washington. I then also used Kakaomaps to get me home, which included a walk through a very hilly neighborhood, where public roadways (which were really walkways) were well labeled, but very intimidating from a Westerners perspective. These routes appear to be the only access for many of the residences up here, I cannot imagine how they get appliances into these homes.

I did make my way to a bus stop, and luckily had exact change, because I am sure they would not have made change for me, if I stuffed a 10,000KRW note in there, that would have gotten me just as far as the 1550KRW that the ride actually cost.

Laura was ready to go get food, and we decided on a grilled skewer place.

Those first pics are a fried mozzarella stick, which came with sweet and sour sauce, or an approximation of ranch, and then the plate of other skewers from left to right; pork skin, apricots, chicken thigh with leeks, chicken gizzard, chicken breast with leeks, and chicken thigh with ttoekboki. The grilled apricots stole the show, they were surprisingly meaty, so they were either incredible well seasoned, or google translate misnamed them and they were some pork part, but they were bomb.

After this meal I was again stil hungry so we went to a Korean style Chinese spot and got

Basically Jajangmyeon, which is the slightly darker and sweeter Korean take on Zhajiangmian. I wanted something more filling that straight meat, or light soups (I do love my carbs) so this fit the bill nicely.

On the 3 block walk home we snagged some fried pastries

The long knot was the least chewy, the small ball was very gummy, and the big ball was basically the small ball, but filled with the smalls balls volume worth of red bean paste. All of them are subtly sweet (which after the sweeter noodles meant they didnt taste all that sweet at all) and texturely interesting. We also got a different kind of sweet pastry, but those are set aside for the morning, so they will be in tomorrows write up.

High stakes Frogger

12052019

Day 5

Finally got to sleep in. All of us slept in until at least 0900 Laura got up first to do some stretching and yoga, I finally got up amd started looking at what it takes to get in the Rijksmuseum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum

It's the Dutch national Museum, seeing that we went to only the one museum in Iceland I was feeling the itch to sauntering around and lookin at old stuff.

We purchase some tickets online and head out for breakfast. On the way to the tram that took us to the museum we stopped at a cafe for breakfast. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, Laura had a ham, cheese and pineapple sandwich, my dad had an omelette, and my mom had a savory tomato-spinach pancake. The savory pancake was basically a pizza, but on a crepe instead of crust, it wasn't bad. Also we obviously had beers, as it was basically lunch, so that's fair.

We made our way to the tram, which involved crossing a bike path, a street, a tramway, another street, and another bike path. Crossing the street here is crazy. You gotta keep an eye out for bikes, because you won't hear them coming. But you have to time it so that you can get across the bike lanes *and* then get across the street as the cars come.

We safely made it to the tram, used our multiday pass for the tram and got to the museum square.

The pre-purchased tickets got us in quick, and we wandered around the museum.

That's a bust of St. Fredrick, that they actually kept some bits of the very same after he was canonized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_of_Utrecht

Some unicorn horns.

The library, which is an active library, you can do research here through a sign up and wait-time process.

There was much more to see, the museum traces Duth art from about 1100 to modern day. You should check it out.

From the meseum we went to a bar.

https://cafegollem.nl/

They had about a half dozen of their own beers and another half dozen guest beers, in addition to over a hundred different beers in bottles/cans.

They also had a cat.

Every beer we tried was great, and all of them were from the Netherlands.

We also got a sausage, and cheese board for snacking.

The sausage in particular was great. It was organic pork, course ground, and spiced with cubeb that really made it pop.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_cubeba

From here we went to dinner. We went to a Surinamese restaurant. Overall it was pretty good. The flavors we're unique and interesting, but there was very little difference across the dishes we selected. There were noodle dishes with beef and lamb, a fried rice and chicken dish, and a chicken and lamb dish with roti. The roti was dry and not inpressive honestly. The chicken and beef was great, the lamb was a little dry, and the fried rice was good, but not my style, it tasted almost smokey. My favorite part were the noodles, they were like chow mein but with Indonesian flavors.

I suppose it was difficult for this meal to be really impressive after our last few dinners.

Laura and I then went to the grocery store to try and get snacks, and we saw we could buy 6 packs of beer for €3.75 we came home with beer in addition to the snacks.

Took it easy the rest if the night.

Where is the castle?

28102016

Did comparatively little today. Got out of bed late, because everyone needs a lazy Friday morning, and made way for the Chiyoda Castle. It was s quick train ride away, though we did buy the wrong tickets, so now we need an excuse to ride the Japan Rail rather then just the Tokyo Metro.

It began to rain just as we popped out of the station at Chiyoda, so we didn't want too much on the gardens, and decided to go to one of the museums to escape the rain.

That first picture is the main gate, and then the moat. It has a very impressive moat all the way around, that had clearly been filled with water for a very long time, with lily pads growing in it.


From what I've gathered on various plaques, the castle was started in response to a few uprising in distant provinces of Japan. It was made the seat of the Shogunate in early 1600s which is when it became a real castle looking much like does today.
Again without a tour I can only really point you to Wikipedia,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_Castle

We then went to the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. It wasnt an exhaustive museum, but it was interesting. Like many modern art museums, I struggled to appreciate the art that is simply paint trowelled onto canvas, or a cardboard box bolted to the wall.

They did have a very interesting room, dedicated to the 1930s and 1940s and how many artists were forced to document the War in the Pacific.

I was hoping to see something of their perspective on WWII, as by most accounts they were the bad guys. Germany is very apologetic, and did is best to divorce the German people and modern Germany from the Nazi Party. This exhibit stated a little more objectively, not admitting wrong doing, not apologetic, but it didn't feel accusatory. From what I gathered it was called the War in the Pacific, fighting primarily the Chinese, and Western Imperialist colonies, not the ideological battle that it is usually framed as in the US.

After the main museum, was the crafts museum, a small annex that has more recent craft works, things like stone ware and baskets. That was neat too, and despite the avant garde and non utility of the art, I appreciate the skill that goes into sculpting and firing a pot vs splattering paint on canvas from 5 ft away.

The castle is made up of many gardens and nature that, despite the rain were still beautiful. As pictured above.

For a late lunch we grabbed some Indian food at a little place just off the women's university campus. And trained home. We had originally indented to go out again for dinner, but neither of us were hungry, and we thought we had to get to the Tsukiji Fish market reeeeaally early, and decided to go to sleep early.

country roads, and tiny towns

2912

a late morning, with the awesome guesthouse breakfast, and then we made our way to the airport to grab our car. of coarse that whole process took too long, rental car agencies like the DMV are places in the universe where the borders between our realm and HELL seems to thin. anyways we got our compact, diesel, right hand drive, manual transmission car, and started our journey.

i navigated while my pops drove. this route we didnt stop off anywhere to see stuff, we drove a rather slow and meandering route, much of it on 2 lane blacktop (though by with, in US standards it would be more like 1 lane with shoulders). at one point we got kinda lost, but its Ireland, and tiny, so we just continued till we hit a bigger road that actually appeared on the map.

we got to Tullamore (a very small town in the middle of Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullamore ) in the mid afternoon, unfortunately the Tullamore DEW experience (fancy giftshop and tiny museum thing) was closed, until the 7th, which is kinda lame, cause we are still in Ireland, just not in Tullamore.

anyways, the biggest part of the day was the drunk Irishman we ran into, my dad an i had thai food, and then went to a bar about 250m from our hotel. the place was old and characterful, full of locals, and my pops n i sat next to an Irish guy who noting our accent, asked if we were in country for the football game, and from there we ent up talking to him a bunch.

first off this guy seemed real drunk when we started talking, and despite his having another 4 Guinness over the course of our conversation, he didnt get particularly more drunk, my dad claims its because "Guinness makes you as drunk as you wanna be" anyways, i had 2 glasses of Tullamore dew (and a Guinness), ive had it before, but i dont remember much, i notice now, with a deeper repertoire to draw from, that Tullamore is alot sweeter than the Irish Whiskeys ive had, it was aright, i wouldnt say any better or worse than the Jameson or Powers i usually have, but different.

anyways talking to this guy was fun, we talked about all kinds of stuff, how Ireland got to the economic state it is in now (the same as the US, basically predatory loans and a mortgage crises) his job (insurance salesmen) and the differences between the US and Ireland, and because of his drunkness we went over stuff a few times, but it was entertaining.

after this we went back to our hotel, i farted around on the internet, and went to sleep, to rest up for the "day of driving" the next day.