Breakfast again at the Paris Baguette. Could become a bad habit. Too much "wicked" food.
Today's tour was of the "Wendy Wu" style with a full busload following a well-trained guide with a portable loudspeaker. In this case our guide spoke Korean all day, nonstop, and we found it hard to shut out, but she was a very nice lady and did her best to talk to us in limited English when she had a spare moment. There was a good spread of ages on board and everyone was well behaved and enjoyed their day. Once again only two nonKoreans in the mix.
We drove quite a long way north up to Ganghwa district on another day of lovely sunny weather. We did the rounds of the Goryeo Palace Site
and the Yongheungung Palace which was quite modest by European Royalty standards. We went next door to look at an Anglican Church built in traditional Korean style. It was 12 noon and the service was still in progress. As we looked through the door they began singing a hymn set to the tune of "A mighty fortress is our God"". Seemed appropriate to the location.
There were numerous other churches in the town.
We stopped at a restaurant in town for lunch and this statue of a family was outside.
After lunch we passed through rice fields.
We drove up to the river which separates North and South at this point and noted the gun towers and razor wire fences.
We were very moved by our visit to the Ganghwa Peace Observatory where we were able to look across the river to villages 1500 meters away in North Korea. We just could not comprehend the strength of the conflict and division which still existed across the DMZ which had been part of our daily lives when we were 10,11,12 years old reading the Australian newspapers.
A lady was giving a lecture to the tourists.
There were binoculars everywhere in the building. The emotions of the citizens could be seen in this room
This simple memorial said a lot about the war.
There was a special sign for Australians.
Was this General Macarthur?
After that we took a look further back in history as we learned about the hundreds of Dolmens that had been built in this area. These were rock structures comparable in size to the Easter Island and Stonehenge ones.
We went inside the history museum.
In the history museum we learned about the early humans of the area and saw comparisons with the ones in Xi'an in China. They showed us how a Dolmen was built.
We finished with a quick look at the ginseng market
and a slow drive in the Sunday afternoon traffic back to Incheon.
Korea is getting better every day.
Today's tour was of the "Wendy Wu" style with a full busload following a well-trained guide with a portable loudspeaker. In this case our guide spoke Korean all day, nonstop, and we found it hard to shut out, but she was a very nice lady and did her best to talk to us in limited English when she had a spare moment. There was a good spread of ages on board and everyone was well behaved and enjoyed their day. Once again only two nonKoreans in the mix.
We drove quite a long way north up to Ganghwa district on another day of lovely sunny weather. We did the rounds of the Goryeo Palace Site
and the Yongheungung Palace which was quite modest by European Royalty standards. We went next door to look at an Anglican Church built in traditional Korean style. It was 12 noon and the service was still in progress. As we looked through the door they began singing a hymn set to the tune of "A mighty fortress is our God"". Seemed appropriate to the location.
We drove up to the river which separates North and South at this point and noted the gun towers and razor wire fences.
We were very moved by our visit to the Ganghwa Peace Observatory where we were able to look across the river to villages 1500 meters away in North Korea. We just could not comprehend the strength of the conflict and division which still existed across the DMZ which had been part of our daily lives when we were 10,11,12 years old reading the Australian newspapers.
After that we took a look further back in history as we learned about the hundreds of Dolmens that had been built in this area. These were rock structures comparable in size to the Easter Island and Stonehenge ones.
In the history museum we learned about the early humans of the area and saw comparisons with the ones in Xi'an in China. They showed us how a Dolmen was built.
We finished with a quick look at the ginseng market
and a slow drive in the Sunday afternoon traffic back to Incheon.
Korea is getting better every day.
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