Yeosu Vacation

A few months ago, okay 8 months ago, we took a trip to Yeosu. Yeosu is a coastal town almost 3 hours from us. It was one of the first trips we took as a family of five, and it was special. Family friends from our neighborhood joined us and we all tagged along sightseeing together.

I’ll tell you why I haven’t written about Yeosu. Her name is Poppy, and I spend all my free time snuggling with her. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I spend a lot of my free time watching old seasons of MTV’s The Challenge. But, when I am not watching The Challenge, I’m almost always cuddling with Poppy.

But, Yeosu was worth sharing. On the way down we stopped at the most beautiful tea plantation I have ever seen. Well, it’s the only tea plantation I have ever seen, but it was beautiful. Rows and rows of perfectly manicured tea bushes. Green tea is famous in this region and this sight made me want to take up tea drinking on a daily basis. While we were strolling along the tea rows, it started to absolutely pour rain. I’d left Tim to go and find a spot to nurse Poppy and I found myself without an umbrella with our 4 month old, getting wetter by the moment. Looking very unprepared and honestly a bit careless, a very kind Korean woman came to my aid. She came and stood with her umbrella right next to me while I nursed Poppy. Her umbrella shielded us from the rain while she became soaking wet. She just nodded at me with a very kind smile. I was extremely touched by her gesture.

We rented an AirBnB for the weekend with the usual rice cooker and floor beds for all of us. It had an awesome view of the ocean that the girls took in with their breakfast each morning.

We checked out another big fish market and you would have thought the girls were members of a famous KPOP band the way that the Koreans surrounded them. It’s clear to me that not a lot of Americans make their way this South with young children. It's endearing how excited people are to see them. Merchants came around from behind their tanks of squid and eel and motioned for their fellow vendors to the same. I found myself in a mob of Koreans wearing wet aprons and gloves smiling at us. While the girls would be perfectly content with the fish market finds and attention from the locals, we also ventured to a real aquarium to meet some sea turtles and a Beluga whale.

We spent hours searching and deciding what to eat for dinner (just like back home). We would walk a little bit, look at the menu, decide to keep walking, go in somewhere to realize they didn’t have high chairs, keep walking, look at another menu. We all settled in for dinner at an agreeable place when the cook came out and told us the only thing left on the menu to eat were pigs feet. We bought two beers from that cook and headed out. I might have come a long way on my pork eating habits, but my palate is still not that sophiscated. We settled on a take away chicken stand a few blocks down. Another afternoon we were set on heading to a guide book favorite for lunch. We couldn’t find it or it had closed from COVID, so we circled and circled. I stopped and asked a few locals about it. Pointing at my guide book and acting out gestures of eating. It didn't help. We ended up at McDonalds. And it was delicious.

To cap off our trip we headed to a coastal cafe along the cliffs with a really fun photo op. There was a large swing set up over the water and a closet full of beautiful flowy dresses. One cafe latte comes with a side of an awesome Instagram photo. Which is now featured on the front page of my blog. Well done, Korean cafe, well done.

Thanks for reading along on our adventures here!

Love,

Val