Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Ilsan beach and ulgi park were one of the first places Jacob and I visited when we moved to Korea. I still vividly remember walking along the road and being blown away by how different everything was. We spent a lot of time in Ilsan beach area throughout our year in Korea – whether it was at In and In, one of the many BBQ restaurants, getting groceries at Home Plus, sitting on the beach or the batting cages we always had a good time.

Surprisingly it seems to have changed the least of all the places we have visited. Unfortunately it was quite windy on the beach and none of us were really dressed appropriately. Fortunately, home plus hasn’t changed a bit and we were able to grab some new clothes. We grabbed a coffee, the girls collected sea glass and we enjoyed sitting in the sand. We had a quick lunch at the GS25, just like old times, and headed towards Ulgi park.

We hiked up the seemingly never-ending staircase to the new to us suspension bridge. It offered great views back over the beach and the expanded Hyundai factory. We eventually made our way down to the ajumma fish markets. The kids got to see one of them taking her nets out of the water. Jacob and I shared a mekju, the kids shared a chilsing until we hiked back down and made our way to Nammok for dinner.

We tried again to find Nam-il at our regular restaurant below ELC but I think we can finally confirm that he’s no longer there. We considered heading back to the BBQ place, but decided two nights in a row might be a bit much. We also considered heading to Pizza Etang but figured it likely wouldn’t live up to our memories seeing a it wasn’t actually that great of pizza, just the best we could get at the time. We stopped in for some Korean Fried Chicken where the kids were a big hit after dancing along to APT. The kids were given mini-projectors as ‘service’ and we made our way to the bus stop.

The buses that we’ve taken so far have been fairly mild, or at least much milder than I remembered. It also seemed to take forever to get back and forth from Nammok to Samsan-Dong. Well we lucked out for this last ride and got what we assume was an OG bus driver. We were thrown around the bus, just like old times, and made the drive in about half the time.