Seoul 2013: 남이섬 (Nami Island)

Hope that everyone had a good Christmas! Happy holidays to all!

The year's coming to a wrap. With all the year end gatherings happening, I may be a lil caught up with things to pay attention to this space for the next few weeks. As I've been neglecting this online area for the past few months, I thought I should at least strive to clear a lil of my massive (you won't believe how much) collection of photos I've amassed so far in 2013.

Besides photos of my baking, there's also vacation photos I've snapped on my two holidays - Seoul in April, and Australia in September. I've only gone through editing half of my Seoul photos, and will probably try to finish it soon so I can move on to the Australia shots (and also, before my upcoming trips in February and March 2014 ha!).

Similar to the 2012 Korea blog posts, I've categorised the photos based on location, and will post them not in sequence of my travel itinerary. My trips to Korea always seem to evolve around food, so there'll be plenty of upcoming posts where majority of the photos will consist of nothing more than food, food, and yes, more food. Thus, I thought I should start things off on a light note, with a post on a popular travel spot in Korea, where the photos will have a dominant focus on stuff other than you know, food. ;)

남이섬 (Nami Island)

There are several ways to make your way to Nami Island. I found a helpful site online > here, that lists down several ways. We actually went by suggestion number 1, via shuttle bus, on the post. We got our hotel staff to help us call and make reservations, so then all we had to do was wake up early to make it in time for the shuttle bus.

There were plenty of animals around on the island. We saw loads of squirrels scampering around here and there. Seriously, how cute are these creatures with their fluffy long tails?

There were plenty of tourists (and maybe locals? not sure about that) so it was virtually impossible to grab shots without people in it. But oh well, if you are patient enough, you can ensure that the photo is at least not bombarded with a whole horde of them.

Aww how sweet. Chanced upon a group of school girls on an outing together. It does makes me miss my school days. Kinda. You know, the part on long school vacations. Definitely not the part involving exams and homework.

We were hungry, so we stopped for lunch at a popular lunch spot I think. The menu selection was pretty
sparse, but the food looks quite good isn't it? We ordered a seafood pancake and a doshirak to share.

The doshirak was served in the traditional metal boxes, and they were hot. You are actually supposed to grab mittens (avail in the restaurant) so that you can pick the box up and shake it well to mix everything within. Instead, we must have missed the memo about the gloves, cos we didn't realise it only after the meal when we saw other people doing it. What we did was to use our chopsticks to mix everything together. LOL.

Kimchi rice, egg and cheese. That is one super simple, yet tasty combo. As I'm typing this, I'm craving for some Korean food...

There's nothing much to do at Nami Island, except to walk around and look at the pretty trees and scenery. I reckon half a day is more than sufficient if you are planning a trip there.

Look! Rabbit! It was so tame that we could walk so close to it for close up shots. So cute!

Nearing the end, we wanted to find a spot to sit with some hot drinks before it was time to board the ferry. There was a cafe there so we popped by for some hot drinks.

Hojicha latte, roasted grains latte and matcha latte

I like how in Korea, if you want a hot drink, you're not just limited to hot coffee or tea. In most of the cafes, there are at least a few different kinds of latte based drinks (essentially steamed milk together with another ingredient) that are not found locally. I decided to try the roasted grains latte as I've seen it at other places but just didn't try it before. It was quite nice and hearty tasting. It took a while for me to get used to the taste though. It's quite hard to describe how it taste like, but I guess the one word would be healthy?

I was wowed by the wall library of books. It looked majestic doesn't it? Great idea for those who are book people. I think these are picture books for kids, so the various colours and images of the books look really nice when placed together like that on the wall.

Yay to crossing Nami Island off my list of places to go in Korea. Now, I still have Busan, Jeju and Jeonju...

I'll try to post more soon! Promise. *fingers crossed at the back*