Last weekend I went the green tea festival in Boseong, so yesterday I made a post about the food that I ate when I was there. I ate a lot, and you can see it all here 😋 Today, I am going to post all my other pictures involving the tea festival, so I hope you all enjoy them.
Designated thumbnail photo.... if anyone knows how to make an image that is not the first one in the post the thumbnail, please let me know. That would be a game changer on how I write these post.
From the Top!
Remember how I said that we made our way to the top and started to eat our way down? Well, I am going to organize my post in just that way, from the top of the hike to the basin of the stream, let's go!
There are hiking trails that extend behind the festival area that we began to climb. Aside from my lungs wanting to kill me because it had been hours since my last cigarette, and my friend had a cold, we got up just fine 😁 A few trees blocked the view of the whole festival, so this was more like a photo from three-quarters of the way up the trail.
The way coming down was stupid steep, like coming up was twisty, this was a straight cut down! It was nice to view though.
Like look at this, this is at least a ten percent grade. Good thing it wasn't wet that day. As you're reading this, you're probably looking at the woman and thinking that she has no issues with it. To you reader, I say Koreans are just used to their arbitrary system of grading slopes.
A close up of these green tea bushes. I feel like I have taken photos like these before...ha
I am not sure if these people are taking photos with the tea or if they are taking part in the tea picking. That was an option for the festival, but considering that we only had about five hours to spend and only on that day, we didn't make any plans to take part in different activities.
It is scenes like this that you only think to exist in animes or traditional paintings, but no hills of tea bushes exist like this, it is not a fantasy.
This is where our hike began, we also came across some platforms where people were drinking tea. Not sure if they were taking part in special tastings or if people could use them at any time. I didn't take any photos because well, they were all in use and I don't want to look like the weird foreigner taking candid shots of people without permission lol
The event area of the festival, this is where we had the first ice cream, bibimbap, and did the tea tasting. We bought bags of the tea later along with green tea chocolates, and these things...
녹차 모나카 Green tea monaka? They are like a biscuit wafer cookie with a green tea sweet filling, super tasty. I got them for the office at my school, and my coworkers love them 😄
This is the green tea chocolate and green tea itself. Both are wonderful and highly recommended 😋
Greenhouse
I think for a lot of essential festivals it is almost necessary to have a greenhouse, so I thought I could get some good photos while I was in here.
To be entirely honest, the greenhouse was pretty underwhelming compared to others that I have visited. There were a few flowers that were rotting as they grew, I thought they looked too sad to take their photos. However, we did not come to this festival for a greenhouse and see basic invasive species; we came here for green tea. When I say that phrase, it sounds weird because I am relatively sure that green tea itself is an invasive species to South Korea. Whatever, we came here for tea! But, I did manage to get a new profile picture 😊
Farther Down We Go!
There was a live band playing at the festival, and they were much better than the people that played at Jindo!
We stumbled upon this giant drum during the festival. I believe there is a nearby temple because we also saw some monks when we passed. The last time I saw one of these drums, it was used by the monks to calm the spirits of nature each day.
A picture of the drum itself.
This is from the balcony, you can see farther down to the entrance of the festival. On the hill, it reads, 'I 💗 녹차,' which is 'I love green tea.'
This is down below the structure that you see in the photo above, they had a little stream running through, so I was able to grab these shots of it.
Some Flowers!
A flower patch that we stumbled upon on our way down. Funny enough, these flowers looked better than the ones that we saw in the greenhouse!
The Spirit of Korean Tea Culture
This was a statue that we came across when we first entered the tea festival, a description is provided above.
See, I wish I didn't have to repost this picture. If I could make this the thumbnail and get rid of the very first photo, I think it would be much better.
Trick Eye on the Way Down
Trick-Eye was a popular form of art a few years ago. I have seen this in other places as well, such as the Image Park near Naju and specific areas in Seoul. So here is the full piece of art from top to bottom. It is a little choppy at first because we didn't see the viewpoints right away since a lot of them have been worn away.
Second Day of Festivities Prep
Just so we can come full circle on this, this is what I had for lunch before we set off to our second festival for the weekend. There are certain things that I miss dearly about America, one of those things is food. What I would give for freshly made Ceasar dressing. This is a chicken wrap with sweet chili sauce and sweet it is, almost all American food in Korea has extra sugar in it, I don't know why but it does. Maybe I will write a post about American food in Korea someday; I think that would be interesting 😉 It will also make me miss all the real American cuisine as well lol
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Until then, Ride on!
Jeollanam-do, South Korea
