In which Roz drags an ailing Layla up a mountain and miles along a cycle path

By Roz

One of the pleasing things about travelling with someone else is that it isn’t viable to go for the “hide-in-the-room” option long term, since one or other of you will eventually say “well, I guess we better go out now” and the other will feel impelled to agree. And thus it was that Layla and I headed out into the scary world of Daedunsan. Our first stop was for lunch (for me, anyway) which was a tasty vegetable bimimbap. Layla, of course, sat there watching me, whilst also writhing in pain (this proved to be a feature of the subsequent few days) – fortunately I am a heartless beast and took this as a cue to order a beer or two.

After lunch, we headed towards the park entrance and got a cable car half way up the mountain. The views were very pleasing and I must confess to a little inner joy that I had managed to avoid the steep uphill walk. On getting out of the cable car, we contemplated the view from the observatory. Given that it was 2 o’clock (and returning to the hotel a minute sooner than we needed to held no attractions for me at all), it struck me as a good plan to head up to the top of the mountain. This did not strike Layla as a good plan, in her weakened and pain-ridden state. So, we agreed that I’d head up (it was around a kilometer) and she’d read her book / doze and wait for me. And so, I headed off.

I must confess that I’d assumed that the hike would be of the usual Korean variety – in other words, very easy going, with boards all the way. In fact, it proved to be rather more hard-core than that and clambering over the rocks I felt slightly explorer-ish. Until, that is, I was passed by a man going downhill carrying a baby (a fact all the more bitter given that I was at that moment using both hands and feet to make the ascent…). The inappropriateness of feeling intrepid was confirmed when I then stumbled across a café (with a speaker playing Sinatra’s My Way…). Ah well...

Having made the ascent, I then began to make my way down. The speed and agility of Koreans when hiking became even more apparent – to the extent that I received encouraging / sympathetic smiles from some and, more humiliatingly, was told by one man to “stop dreaming and get going”! But it was good fun.

On returning to Layla, I found that she’d gone to sleep in the shade, and had awoken freezing cold and feeling rather worse. Sadly, it did not occur to me that this development should mean that we should get the cable car down again – but instead I pressed on with our original plan of walking back. This proved to be a rather painful and unfortunate experience for us both, with Layla needing to stop every 100 meters or so. But she assured me that in the moments where she wasn’t feeling dreadful, she was glad she was there.

Back at the bottom of the mountain, we decided to go and sit in the park and read and drink / snack. This we did until it became cold, at which point we headed back to the uninviting hotel. The evening is best skated over. Suffice to say that I developed something of Layla’s ailments, which took the form of a fever and overwhelming headache, so the evening was spent in the room, feeling rather sorry for ourselves.

The next morning, we got an early bus to Daejeon and then a bullet train to Seoul. On getting into Seoul, we headed straight to our glamorous and final hotel – the Fraser Suites. We dumped our bags (having got there too early to check in) and then went to explore our new area, Insadong. Slightly startled by the crowds (and still feeling a trifle fragile) we soon stopped off for a cup of tea (which in my case turned into a lemon drink which I found strangely terrifying). Fortified, we did a little more wandering and stopped off in an art gallery, where we briefly contemplated buying some art. We resisted, and then I urged that we found somewhere for lunch. Directed to an Italian place by a local tourist guide who was randomly standing on the street, we found ourselves having delicious pumpkin soup (served in hollowed out warm pumpkins), warm bread and wine. Or at least I did. Layla took two spoonfuls of her soup, turned green, and I became the beneficiary.

After which, we went back to the hotel to check-in properly. At this point, things definitely began to look up. Our room turned out to be a spacious self-contained flat with a very comfy sofa. With Layla having been unmanned by the pumpkin soup, I suggested that we settle down on the sofa, watch a film (from the extensive DVD library which the hotel had) and recover. At thus it was that we watched Good Will Hunting (a film we’d not seen before): Layla did her obligatory weeping at the appropriate moments, and it was all very pleasing. After the film, I left Layla to read and went to the gym, where I ran 10K whilst simultaneously people-watching the busy street below me (and listening to an Anthony Trollope audiobook – seemingly my new addiction). After this, we both headed to the jacuzzi / sauna to wallow in the warm water.

Evening had of course arrived, and we took the decision to resist the lure of the locality in favour of a night in our flat, in the hopes that Layla would finally recover (dragging Layla down a mountain hadn’t proved to be as medicinal as I’d hoped, so this approach seemed a reasonable alternative). We settled down with the epic Gone With the Wind (which in my view Layla had to watch before our move to DC) and got room service, including some very nice wine – and worked our way through the first two thirds of the film, before heading to bed.

The next morning, Layla announced that she was cured. The delicious hotel breakfast unfortunately demonstrated that this was not the case. But she was improved anyway. And so we headed off to hire bikes to go on a cycle route suggested by Lonely Planet (also medicinal, I think). And it proved to be a truly lovely cycle route. There’s a huge river in Seoul, called the Han, and alongside it there’s a fantastic cycle path (and a separate path for walkers) that goes on for many kilometers. Alongside sparkling water, and in glorious sunshine, we had an exceptionally jolly cycle ride. Often we cycled with huge motorways above us, and we contemplated the glorious fashion in which Korea has created a space that mixes the very urban with carving out a space for nature in the very heart of the city. It felt like the future. The paths were busy (it happened to be a bank holiday) and it was lovely to cycle alongside so many locals. The route was also peppered with outdoor exercise machines, and we felt obliged to have a little play (though Layla found this had a less medicinal result than one might have thought!).

Returning back to the hotel at the end of the day, we contemplated our options for our very last night of our lovely holiday. And so we found ourselves back in the jaccuzzi, and then off to dinner in the Italian place we’d lunched in the day before. Layla felt that she might be up to more than one mouthful of soup, and I was enthusiastic about eating something that wasn’t rice and vegetables (of which I have had quite a lot on this holiday). Dinner was really very good indeed – to the extent that Layla ate an entire bowl of soup, whilst I managed a main course as well – and then we headed back to the hotel for the final third of Gone With the Wind.
There’s little to say about our last morning in Seoul – there was an alarm clock, a 10K run down in the gym for me and breakfast - and then it was time for the airport bus. But what a lovely holiday it’s been. And that’s just as well, because in 7 weeks and 3 days we’ll be emigrating to Washington DC, where we’ll be living for the next 4 years. So this oasis of a holiday (albeit with a little illness thrown in) has been just what the doctor ordered…