Today Thursday was mainly a travel day. We moved from Seogwipo city on the South of Jeju Island to Busan, the second largest city in Korea and the far southern port. For most of this trip, 85%? Kim made reservations in advance. One step that we had not tied down was a flight from Jeju to Busan. It is clearly not summer. How hard could it be to snag a flight? HARD. The only available seats on a daytime direct flight was at 8:30 am out of Jeju city. We had moved to Seogwipe on the other side of the island for a couple days. So, we had to get up at 4am! The car rental return only opened at 6am. Our hotel in Seogwipo had a garage and kept our car but it was all valet. We had to order the car when we wanted it etc. And, they close down the front desk from 12pm until 5am.
Oh well. Kim set it all up. I was nervous, sure something would go wrong, but willing to just let it unfold. Nothing to be done. But it all worked! They put a box on the front desk that says drop your room key here if you are leaving. But, in the box are our car keys. The manager shows Kim how to open the bos and at 4am she gets our keys and the valet has left the car right in front, facing out!
Hopefully you have no idea what Gout is except some maladee that befell Samuel Johnson and other bon vievants in English literature. I have Gout. I would not be disappointed if it went away with my decrease in drinking, but it is back and I had an attack today. In the past, it has been triggered 100% of the time by eating scallops. I can eat lobster, shrimp but not scallops. The Italian shrimp dish we had Wednesday night did not advertise anything besides shrimp. And Kim asked if it would be ok for me. I did get a cray fish body in my mouth as I worked through the mixture in search of mushrooms. Anyway, today my knee was very painful in a gout kind of way. Luckily there are pills and I carry them and started the regiment. The reason I include this story is that the above image of the suway name is on the elevator structure that we now try to use instead of the steps to save my knee as much as possible.
I do not have any images yet of the underground. We hce not tried even one bus in Korea but Kim is mentioning it as such would be fun to be ble to see outside instead of our present view of just the other passengers. Not that the passengers are not interesting! We always have at least one young woman who is compulsively bathing her face in creams? Kim has notices that very few women wear ear rings and none of the dangly type. Most of the fingernails are not painted at all. There are some wedding rings on both married man and women but maybe not 100%.
That is a wrap for moving day Thursday. At dinner we did stat the “Next Trip” conversation. We agreed that some of what we like is just overcoming the challenge of independent travel. Kim feels strongly that I need a minder, especially around the poor eyesight. I really enjoy having Kim along and also feel that I really want to continue traveling to new places. Kim gets very frustrated with having me around so much. We will see what happens as we experience another week, now moving into the back country and away from the large focal points of Seoul, Jeju and Busan. I am still hopeful that when we return Kim will say that it was a lot more fun than she anticipated. She was not looking forward to Asia though she does voice some interest in Japan and Australia.