Andong

Well, we broke down and bought a car. (Ha ha!) But it's okay. We still do a fair share of walking. But it does make it easier to get out & explore, like to Andong. Home of the traditional mask festival, which sounds really fun except we missed it back in October. Korea has a history & love affair with these traditional masks. It was explained to me that back when they had the class system in place, those in the lower class were forbidden to speak poorly of the upper class. So they would make masks as their form of expression. Every souvenir shop here has some wooden ones for sale. I hope you can enlarge this to see it better.


Unfortunately we didn't get to the mask museum outside of Andong, which is supposed to be fairly nice. But we'll definitely be making another trip up there. This visit we went to a Korean folk village. The homes here were moved to their present location some years back for a dam construction project & renovated at that time. They also use a large section for filming Korean shows because it is so authentic (that's what the info says anyway). We didn't walk over the whole village because it was so COLD & we weren't really prepared for it. It started snowing on us and there were some strong winds so we had to give it up sooner than I liked.




We also tried to go to the adjacent museum, but they were inexplicably closed.

Ubiquitous totems in front of the museum.

We also stopped by Korea's oldest and largest stone pagoda, Sinse-dong Chilcheung Jeontap (seven storied pagoda). 

My favorite picture!

The best part: we ate lunch at Pizza Hut! Ha ha. (My husband is very unwilling to risk it in a Korean restaurant, mainly because they eat many things raw [even sometimes beef] & we don't!) We tried this crust that said it had sweet potato that I assumed was just mixed into the crust. Wrong; they have a thin ring of mashed sweet potatoes & then cheese around the crust. I think they must a different kind of sweet potatoes than I know because they were yellow & very sweet. It was different but really good. Even the world's pickiest husband liked it! Then we went to have coffee and dessert at a bakery, and I tried a 'glutinous rice donut'. Yech. Take my word, leave it on the shelf. It was fun to mush though! It's similar to the consistency of one of those stress balls & I think probably about the same flavor too.

They had a big Christmas tree up in the center of the outdoor shopping area and a Salvation Army bell ringer, bucket & all, so it was kind of nostalgic. And with the snow falling it was just great!