Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

After the girls discovered art box on our first trip into samsan-dong they’ve been obsessed with finding any and all stationary stores. When we lived here these stores were everywhere. You couldn’t walk a block without finding a 1000 won shop or a place that sold pens and cute paper with weird English sayings on them. Apparently though these are a thing of the past – and so are the character socks – which is just really too bad. Either way we convinced the kids that before they blew all of their money at art box we should head to seong-nam dong (old downtown) to the shopping streets.

After wandering around for a while we realized nothing was going to compare to art box so we moved onto the next part of the day: bus-hopping. This is a game we used to play when we lived in Ulsan to get to see some other areas of the city and because it was a cheap and fun way to pass a day. We have told the kids about the game and they’ve been asking to play every time we are in a major city. We each took a turn setting the rules for getting off and on and eventually ended up near the bamboo forest. The bus routes have changed quite a bit so it didn’t work out exactly like it used to but the kids still had a good time.

The bamboo forest was a first for Jacob and I. I don’t remember spending a lot of time touring around Ulsan – we were always busy rushing off to other cities on the weekend. I honestly can’t even say for certain this park even existed when we lived there. It gave the kids a chance to blow off a little steam, run around and enjoy the sunshine. A nice day of fresh air is the best cure for jet lag – and it was one that we all needed.

We considered heading into busan to catch a baseball game for the evening but by the time we got back to the hotel no one felt up for the adventure. That and we weren’t entirely sure how to book tickets without a Korean phone number. So the backup plan to head to nammok, while it’s not exactly as exciting of an option, it will undoubtedly be a highlight for me and Jacob.

When we were in nammok earlier in the week we found our old favourite BBQ restaurant. We headed back in hopes that it was the same people and we were not disappointed. It hasn’t changed a bit. We were seated at our old favourite table alongside a bunch of HHI workers who bought us drinks and cokes for the kids. The soup was exactly as good as I remembered it. The side dishes amazing. The experience was perfection. I have very literally dreamed about this restaurant for 15 years so it was pretty exciting to be back. And of course, you can’t have a BBQ night without a little serving at the end 😉