Chuncheon Dakgalbi Festival

Hello, everyone! I hope you had a great weekend and a good start to the week. Today in another late post, I want to share another adventure from last year. I waited to post about it in case we went back this year, but we decided not to. So now I get to make a post about the awesome dakgalbi festival in Chuncheon!

If you read my post about my Favorite Korean Food, you’ll notice that I talked about dakgalbi (닭갈비) and it’s probably my all-time favorite. So when I found out about this festival in a train magazine, I told my boyfriend about it immediately. We still had a month or so until it started, but we started making plans.

Here’s a great view from the Skywalk, which is a long bridge made of glass so you can see the water beneath you!

In the province of Gangwon (강원도) are several places of interest, including Sokcho and Pyeongchang (among others). The city of Chuncheon (춘천시) is known as the hometown of dakgalbi. There’s a street in the city dedicated to dakgalbi restaurants, though we didn’t venture that far. The festival itself had a lot to see, and it reminded me quite a bit of state fairs and air shows back home. Different food stands, game stands, souvenir shops, and even groups playing traditional music in costume.

In the evening, we went to one of the bigger food places that felt like an outdoor restaurant. Many people were there getting the same orders, and the servers just ran around with pans, side dishes and bottles of soju, cleaning tables and stirring everybody’s food. We ordered one with cheese of course (because cheese makes everything better) and it wasn’t like the cheese fondue they have at Yoogane. Most dakgalbi restaurants pour the cheese on top after they’ve cooked it so it mixes in. It’s okay, but it’s not my favorite. It was pretty delicious and it was cool having it in that atmosphere and in its place of origin. I thought it was interesting that they added sesame leaves because I don’t see that often. I imagine it’s closer to the original recipe, or at the very least the original itself.

The food wasn’t even my favorite part of the trip, though. The guesthouse we stayed at (Segroo Guesthouse) was outside of town on one of the neighboring islands. It was maybe a 30-minute taxi ride between the house and the downtown area, but it felt so secluded and far more quiet than the busy streets of Seoul. It was a little strange being in a rural area again, but my absolute favorite part was actually getting to see stars in the sky. Seoul is nice, but it’s such a densely populated area that there’s too much light pollution to see anything. On a clear night, I can maybe pinpoint about 5 stars and that’s it (and a couple of planets as well). I’m such an astronomy nerd that stargazing always takes my breath away and I felt so much relief in seeing them again. There weren’t a lot, but a lot more than in the city.

This was also our first trip together and the guesthouse was so nice that we wanted to stay there again. When we checked this year, they didn’t have any vacancies unfortunately. He also pointed out that we should really try going other places we haven’t been before. He’s Korean, but he hasn’t spent that much time in Korea, nor much time exploring it so there are many places that neither of us have been to. We’ve still got a lot of time and a lot of places to see!

And yes, we kissed under the stars and I finally got him to smile for a picture on the Skywalk!

That’s all for me today! I’ve got some great posts coming up and I hope to have them finished soon. I’m really looking forward to sharing them with you. I hope you enjoyed reading and have a great day! ♥