The Road to 40 Day 334/365: Coastal Driving in Jeju

We’re off to our next hotel, and we decided to take the long, scenic route heading there.

Che and I planned on running in the morning, but we thought we’d have a lot of walking ahead of us anyway, so maybe we could pass on running this day. I was fine because I ran for two straight days, and I’m due for a rest.

Instead, we decided to do some last-minute exploration of our place. There was a haenyo school behind our pension house. Haenyos are free divers who harvest shellfish in the sea. We found that the restaurant was open from 7am, and an ahjumma guided us to the seats.

We had a quick breakfast of abalone porridge, seafood ramen, and some seafood pancake.

The pancake was nothing special, but it came with a lot of greens and seafood more than batter. The seafood ramen was basically instant ramen with fresh seafood, which was nice. The mussels were nice and chewy, the shrimp were springy and tasted fresh, the squid was nicely cooked, and there was a huge abalone there too.

The abalone porridge was the one that we felt was special. The flavors oozed into the rice, and the abalone pieces were nicely portioned that even if you didn’t eat it regularly, you’d appreciate the bite.

Che got coffee, and we sat by the garden behind our pension house before we left. The location was fine, but I feel like we aren’t going to be doing that again anytime soon.

We started to drive off to this bakery that was supposedly really nice, Seogwipean Bakery. It’s an hour away from where we stayed, and it’s actually far from the hotel we’re going to stay at. However, I said it’s going to be nice to go to since it’s on the other side of the island that we’ve seen so far.

We thought it might be as big as Singapore, but apparently, its land area is twice as large. Instead of the straightforward route, we went by the coastline and stopped by a nice-looking port.

We reached the bakery, and thankfully, it’s not as crowded as what reviews say. I guess it helped that it’s a Wednesday afternoon.

Not all the bread types were available when we got there at 2pm, but it was fine. The view was amazing and peaceful, you’d want to spend hours just looking out at sea.

I’m not a bread expert, but the olive ciabatta was really soft, which we appreciated. There was a 108-layer pastry, which tasted like a croissant. Overall, I’d love to go back, if only for the views, but you can’t go wrong with their pastries.

We were trying to remember places that we’ve seen in dramas, but nothing really stood out much, except for When Life Gives You Tangerines and Welcome to Samdalri. We didn’t plan on going to those places, but we thought maybe if they were along the way, we could drop by.

We reached Ojo Port, which supposedly was the shooting location for the shop at Tangerines. However, we couldn’t find it, so we decided to go elsewhere. There was a canola flower field nearby, where we stopped and enjoyed the view with a bunch of photoshoots.

We thought about going to a beach where we were supposed to have dinner yesterday. However, as we were on the way, we realized it’s a long drive and will make our hotel check-in even longer. About midway through, Che decided to change the navigation to head straight to the hotel.

We reached Somerset Jeju in Shinhwa World around 5pm already. We realized that we booked a huge room, because it was the only one available at the time of Che’s booking.

Vino had his own room, but naturally, he won’t be sleeping in it. There’s a whole extra room as well. Part of our booking was a ticket to the nearby theme park. We had dinner first before exploring it. Since we arrived late, most of the rides were already closed, but there weren’t a lot of people, so it was just nice.

After one quick ride and a trip to the gift shop, we headed back to our room.

Che and Vino got blind boxes, which they opened when we got to the room. Che got what she wanted, and Vino avoided what he didn’t want, so it’s a win for both of them.

Since we got to our room, Vino had been complaining about why we didn’t stay here for our whole stay. Since we were leaving early tomorrow, he was extra salty about not staying in this awesome room for a longer period.

We watched a movie while finishing some of the snacks we bought to cap off our last day in Jeju.

It’s been an amazing time, and while we traveled about a hundred kilometers this day, it was cool to experience the island this way.