The Road to 40 Day 333/365: Running, Sights, and Jeju Black Pork

It’s our first full day in Jeju, and we immediately had to tick off a couple of things in our bucket list here.

Right off the bat, I said I wanted to go on a run because the paths looked beautiful. I got up around 7:30am and told Che I was heading off. It was pretty sunny, and there was no traces of the rain and fog from the night before.

It was 12 degrees Celsius, so even if the sun was shining brightly, it felt chilly. Our place was right by the beach, and there was a path at the back where I could warm up before my run.

There weren’t a lot of people running around this time, so I had the path practically to myself. The roads were small, but not a lot of cars were also coming by this way. I followed the coast until a small break where the road gets even narrower.

I followed the road to get to the city and tried to circle back to our place. I took a bit of a longer path heading back, and only turned in when I felt like going further ahead would leave me with no direct road heading back.

I ran past narrow roads with houses before finding my way back to the coast near our place. After exploring a bit more, I went back home after just about over four kilometers of running.

I could have run more, I feel like, because the weather was just so fine, and I barely broke a sweat. However, I didn’t want to push it. After all, it was supposed to be a rest day for me.

I went back to find Vino still sleeping, but Che was waiting for me already. We prepared to go out to find brunch. We found this place called Cafe Tangerine, which had good reviews and was pretty close to our place.

We could have walked to this place, as I unknowingly passed by it while I ran. But we did plan on exploring the place a bit more after eating, so bringing the car was fine.

Cafe Tangerine offered a good selection of food for brunch. It’s not extensive, but enough to tease your appetite. I had the Tangerine Salad, which had a good selection of greens, an avocado, a boiled egg, small cheese balls, and incredible tasting slices of tangerine. Che had the Tangerine Breakfast, which looked like a teaser of all their breakfast offerings. For Vino, we got a ham and cheese bagel.

For drinks, I had a tangerine tea, which had bits of tangerine at the bottom, Che had a peanut latte, which was a specialty, and Vino got a strawberry latte that didn’t have coffee.

Apart from the good food, the ambience was excellent. Just about every corner was nice for photo-taking, the music was chill, and the vibes were just nice. It probably helped that it wasn’t crowded on this weekday morning.

We decided to just go for a drive following the road as we decided what to do next. While on the way, we found that there was a waterfall nearby, so we put it in our navigation system and followed the instructions.

We ended up at Cheonjiyeon Waterfalls, which was about a 20-minute drive from where we were. We saw that there was a bit of a hike and almost didn’t want to go, but we decided to just try and see it since we were there anyway.

It was a bit of a walk, about 600 meters, but no high elevation, which was excellent for kids. I saw some waterfalls where you had to climb steps, so this was not that bad.

The trail was also nice in the spring, as the sakura blossoms just bloomed while the other leaves were changing colors.

We headed back home, as Che had a meeting at 2pm. The plan was for Vino and I to have lunch and go back to pick up Che, but Vino went on a call and I opted to rest. By the time that we were supposed to go, there wasn’t a lot of time left to visit a museum and go back to pick up Che, so we stayed on.

We left around 4:30pm to head off to a restaurant serving Jeju Black Pork that Che made a reservation for prior to our trip. We didn’t realize that it was close to the airport, which was an hour’s drive away.

We still decided to go, but we were thinking about plan B while on the way, because we would not be able to reach our reservation time. We thought if we reached there and they turn us away, it would be such a waste of time.

Ultimately, we decided to cancel our reservation and find another restaurant that served black pork. A friend and I were talking earlier in the day, and we saw that there was a branch of a restaurant near us. However, since we’re all not sure if that’s actually the restaurant that he ate at, Che found a different place instead.

Black Ranch was about a kilometer away from where we were at the time, so we said we should try it out. We were happy with this detour, as the road going to that place had beautiful sakura trees lined up on both sides of the road.

The food was incredible. While I stopped eating meat on this diet, I just had to have black pork. We got skinless ribs, aged pork belly, and aged pork neck. On the side, we got a steamed egg and kimchi jiggae.

The pork melts like butter, similar to good quality beef. I usually dip my meat in samjjang, but this restaurant offered a special sauce that went so well with the meat. They also offered us a local Jeju fish for free.

Service was excellent, as they cooked and cut the meat for us, apart from the free fish, because they saw that we were tourists. The food was top-notch, can’t say anything much. It’s grilled meat, so it’s not revolutionary, but the quality of the meat was insane. You had to try it to believe it. Vino ranked it first among all the meats he’s tasted so far.

We had dessert at a nearby cafe to drown out all the cholesterol we had and add in some diabetes. Vino had an episode where he accidentally hit Che after she teased him a bit and he lost his game. I wasn’t really in the mood for taking pictures after that.

Normally, if anyone hurt either Che or Vino, I would be fuming. There were times I hurt people because of it. However, this time, it was Vino hurting Che, so I was just all confused about what to feel.

We had a long talk, and we gave him time to process everything while we were having dessert. He would settle in slowly and he was back to his silly self later on after talking and hugging it out with Che.

To end the day, we parked at the nearby gift center and had a few snaps around the area. Apparently, we stayed at a tourist destination and apart from my run, we haven’t really explored much of the place.