Ilsan

Soojeong and I decided to make a trip to the near-by city of Ilsan the other day to meet a friend of hers for dinner and go walking at a park there. Her friend was unfortunately not able to make a bus in time to get there for dinner with us, but we made plans to meet up another day. Getting hungry, Soojeong and I decided that it was time to get something to eat before we we checked out the park. The shopping center where we had dinner was called Western Dom and it was full of every kind of store and restaurant you could think of. We decided to take a break from Korean cuisine for a day and eat Vietnamese food. It was delicious! Even though what we ordered had a few fried items in it, it was really easy on the stomach and I felt good after eating it.

With our bellies full of Vietnamese food it was decided that we should walk to the near-by 호수 공완 (lake park). The park was in a beautiful area just outside the business district of Ilsan. A few weeks ago there had been a flower festival there, and some of the flower displays were still up. Another neat thing about the park was the bikes that people could rent to ride around the lake. We opted to skip out this time, but there were a number of couples on tandem bikes and other people just riding normal bikes. After sitting down for a bit and watching the sunset, it was decided that we wanted to eat some dessert. We headed back to the Western Dom and went to a cafe that we had visited last year. It has nice chairs that rock back and forth, and four actually swing benches near the window that look out into the shopping center. That is where we sat. Ilsan was a really nice city with all the amenities of Seoul, just with less people. I think we will go back again and tour a TV station there sometime this next month.