Whew – it was a busy Saturday! Patrick’s mom and sister gave us a really fun wedding gift of 12 envelopes, each stuffed with one “date” activity, including directions, admission fee, and a description of the place. We’re supposed to open one each month to help us have time together and get out and explore.

Today we used our first “date” – a trip to the Yoemiji Botanic gardens, about 20 minutes from where we live. They had a huge and beautiful indoor space filled with a variety of gardens, including jungle flora (complete with statue dinosaurs!), water-plants, flowers, and a whole room of American cacti (oh boy!).

Patrick and I are recreating the photo on the card we got from Anita. Beautiful indoor garden space!

Jungle “fauna” in the indoor jungle room at Yoemiji.

Patrick with the very exotic North American cacti – feels like home!

The outdoor grounds had small sections for Japanese traditional gardens, Korean traditional gardens, Italian and French (both relatively bland compared to the real deals).

Patrick in the pagoda-like structure in the traditional Korean garden. Beautiful painting!

The flowers were really beautiful. I had no idea there were so many kinds of water lilies (or that what I would call water lilies, they call Lotus).

My favorite water lily / lotus – it got a bit washed out but the outer leaves are very pale purple.

A beautiful pale yellow lily/lotus.

Two beautiful lotus flowers outside in the traditional Korean garden.

Fun patterned orchids in the flower garden.

The fruit garden was really cool too, giving us nice sign-posts to help us ID things we might likely find on market shelves. 🙂 The coolest things we saw were a few huge swallowtail(?) butterflies and some really bright dragonflies.

One of the bright red dragonflies that were putting on a show for us in the “bog garden”.

A huge and beautiful moth/butterfly. I think it may have been a swallowtail? We saw several of these flitting around the Seogwipo area.

We spent a couple hours taking it in, and even climbed up a few hundred steps to the top of the observatory tower for very hot and slightly hazy views of the area. The trip down was tougher – Patrick was a bit tall for the stairs – I think that’s going to be a common problem here.

Big windows and great views from the observation tower. The horizon is the ocean!

Patrick bumping his head on the Korea staircase from the observation tower.

Right next to Yoemiji is a very touristy resort area, which meant it was well-signed and easy to find things! We wandered right next “door”following signs for Cheonjeyeon Falls. We didn’t realize these were such an attraction – there were tons of couples and families wandering around, including one 2 or 3-year-old and his mom stopped half-way across the beautiful “Bridge of the 7 Nymphs” while the mom made the boy pee into a bottle. Very cute.

There were signs for 3 levels of Falls – the waterfall has three levels of drops. 2 always run and were really beautiful. The 3rd I guess only runs after heavy rains, so we didn’t see water falling there, but there was beautiful stone faces and a beautiful clear blue/green pool.

These only run after heavy rain, but I love the building-block style formations and the crystal clear water!

A nice Irish couple took this photo of Patrick and I at the second falls. Nice drop and pretty rocky rim to the pool. You can’t tell, but there are about 50 Korean tourists all around us!

Pretty impressive selfie at the third falls overlook.

Walking to the falls was a great workout. Tons of wooden and stone steps, all a bit uneven. We met a nice Irish couple who teaches on the mainland as we walked up and down the steps, and traded photo shots (we still gravitate toward white people to ask for help, but hopefully learning the language will come).

After the falls, we drove into Seogwipo, the largest town on the South side of the island. Seogwipo, like many towns and villages, has a traditional “5-day Market”. They are held every 5 days, and bring in dozens or hundreds of sellers offering absolutely everything: cloth, furniture, sunglasses, clothes, fresh fish, chicken, pig hooves, fruits, veggies, candy, fresh noodles and Korean bbq, and fresh sweet fried breads and doughnuts.

The entrance to the 5-day market in Seogwipo.

A few of the sellers. This market has over 200 stalls under the covered roof – so many bright colors… and potent smells

Not sure what these were, but they were hot, fresh fried dough, stuffed with some kind of paste and covered in sugar. Can’t go wrong! And the lady made us wait to get hot ones fresh from the oil. Yum.

We couldn’t do a lot with our limited Korean, but we played some good charades to identify honey (bzzzz, slap-the-face, yes!), and walked away with some great fresh produce, honey, and a little baggie of candies to try. Check out our haul!

Yum! Cherry tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, zucchini-like squash, hot red peppers, honeydew-like local melons, a bag of fun candies, some of the famous Jeju tangerines, and a big load of honey. We’re ready for the week!

That’s our Saturday! Pretty great day. Please leave a comment if you visit so we know you’re here – we love to connect with you! And if you have any questions about life here, please ask! If I don’t know the answers, they’ll be a fun research project for me. 🙂 Thanks for reading!