Eungbong

Often when we take line 3 north across the Han River (and let's face it, that happens a lot- Myeongdong is up there) we've wondered what was on the hill in the above photo. First of all, the fact that there is a hill there at all is weird because the land along the river is very valuable and lined with high rise apartment buildings for as far as you can see. On top of this it looked like there was some kind of fort, look-out or hut on top that would be worth investigating. There was only one way to find out, so we looked on Google Earth, found out the name of the closest subway station, and took the train there.

After getting out of the station it was only a 10-15 minute sweaty hike straight up the hill. At the top was a pagoda (the "hut"!), a dozen old people and some public exercise equipment. The aforementioned sweaty hike was more than enough exercise for the both of us so we opted to sit around enjoying the view rather than lift weights.

Foreground: a Canadian wondering where the ice cream/cola cart ajumma is on this damn hill
Background: Seoul Forest and the Han River

There was a lot of concrete to admire.

We walked back to Oksu Station where we had directions to Haddon House, an excellent foreign foods store that we'd never been to before. Before heading there, though, we walked down to the Han River to check out the flooding we'd seen from afar on the train earlier. We've gotten a lot of rain lately, but from the looks of it it made for some easy fishing, and there were poles set up everywhere... though I don't know if I'd want to eat anything that came from the Han River!

At Haddon House we purchased some jalapenos to make jalapeno jelly. It's a favorite snack of ours and we've been craving it for over a year now. Unfortunately, it's not easy to buy pectin in Korea so I had to use gelatin to set the jam, which wound up doing nothing but creating 2 weird jars of pepper juice. Everything is an experiment in Korea!