Gyeongpo Beach, Park, and Lake and More

This afternoon, as I get ready to end this brief stay in Gangneung, I visited Gyeongpo Beach and Gyeongpo Park, and walked around Gyeongpo Lake within Gyeongpo Park. That sounds like a lot of Gyeongpo, doesn’t it?

After that, I retraced my steps beside the beach, Gyeongpo Beach, that I took to get to Gyeongpo Park, retraced my steps beside a couple of beaches that I walked beside this morning, walked beside a couple more beaches, and ended the day at Gangneung’s “coffee street.”

This is my last post from Gangneung, so there’s a summary of my time here below.

Gyeongpo Beach

I ended this morning having lunch at a restaurant across the road from Songjeong Beach. Gyeongpo Beach is the continuation of Songjeong Beach. The two look quite similar, so there’s little more I can say about Songjeong Beach that wouldn’t be redundant. But, if you’re nice, I’ll post a picture of it.

“Look quite similar.” That’s the thing I noticed about the beaches in Gangneung. There is a long, straight string of them that I walked beside, and I think one or two more beyond that, where the only geographic feature that breaks the string is the river between Gangmun Beach and Songjeong Beach that I mentioned this morning.

Apart from that, I couldn’t discern any natural boundary that separated one beach from another. It’s almost as if the city said, “This is boring. This long stretch of beach has only one name. Let’s split them up arbitrarily and give them different monikers.”

Looking at a map, there are a few more rivers interrupting beaches in Gangneung, but not for the ones I walked along.

I imagine they are names of neighbourhoods the beaches are in, but I don’t know. I couldn’t see where one neighbourhood behind the beaches ended, and the next neighbourhood began either.

Gyeongpo Park

If you read yesterday afternoon’s post from here in Gangneung, you might remember that I decided where to go then by looking at my mapping application for a big green blob (hopefully a park) within walking distance of my hotel and then going there. As a bonus, it had a big blue blob (a reservoir for which I found three different names, as it turns out) on the map in the middle of the green blob.

Gyeongpo Park is the big brother, or perhaps big sister, or maybe big gender-fluid sibling of the big blue blob within a big green blob. But the big sibling of whatever gender has a name of which I’m certain, Gyeongpo Park or, more formally, Gyeongpo Provincial Park, and, within it, Gyeongpo Lake.

Gyeongpo Park and yesterday’s find are almost adjacent, with a stream and a narrow strip of green space joining them.

Enough about yesterday. Back to Gyeongpo Park.

There is a strip of land with buildings on it behind Gyeongpo Beach. Gyeongpo Park is on the other side of that strip of land and a road. I had to walk a fair piece along Gyeongpo Beach to get to a road that cuts over to Gyeongpo Park.

On that strip of built-up land, right beside the road that cuts over to the park, is Gagneung’s chunkier, shorter, less stylish answer to Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands building. The Gangneung structure is called Skybay Hotel Gyeongpo,

Now that I’ve said that, I realize that I don’t know the chronology of the two buildings. Maybe Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands is Singapore’s more slender, taller, more stylish answer to the Skybay. Another difference is that SIngapore building has three towers holding up its boat-like building above, the Skybay has only two.

There is a path around Gyeongpo Lake. The full circle is 4.3 kilometres in circumference.

The path has two lanes that are distinguished only by the colouring of their pavement. One side, the side closest to the lake, is for pedestrians. The other is for bikes.

Calling them “bikes” rather than bicycles was a conscious choice on my part. There were a small number of people on personal bicycles, but most of the bikes on the path were quadracycles that were rented out somewhere. I didn’t see the rental place.

I don’t know if there’s some rule about this, or if it’s just what everyone does naturally, but everyone walked or cycled around the lake in the same direction, clockwise.

For much of the way around the lake, the green space on either side of the path is minimal. On one side of Gyeongpo Lake, there is a series of mostly small, but a few large, sculptures on the strip of green space between the path and the lake. Most of them are quite fanciful.

I didn’t take pictures of all of the statues, and I won’t post all of the pictures I did take, but here are some pictures of the sculptures:

There were also some sculptures on the other side of the lake, but they were on the strip of green space between the path and a busy street. Taking pictures of them from the path gave them an ugly background. So I didn’t post any of those images here.

As I said, for most of the way around the lake, there’s not much green space on either side of the path. There’s the lake beyond a narrow strip of green on one side, and city streets beyond a narrow strip of green on the other.

But most of the way isn’t all of the way. On one side of the lake, there is a large amount of park space beyond the lake. That area contains lots of flowers, trees, lawns, tall grasses, marshes, ponds, and a few art pieces. There are raised boardwalks over some of the marshes and ponds. The whole scene is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous.

I detoured into it rather than walking along the lakeside path the full way. Instead, I walked inland, or over-marsh, for part of the way. So I ended up walking more than the 4.3 kilometres. It was worth it.

More Beaches

After leaving Gyeongpo Park, as I said, I retraced my steps beside the string of beaches and continued farther along more beachfront. For all of my retraced steps, and a little piece beyond, I walked on boardwalk or sidewalk adjacent to the beach. But that ran out as I walked along new (for me) territory.

However, when it did, there was a pine forest that was considerably wider than the pine forest I saw this morning. I walked through that rather than on the sand beach. Nevertheless, the soil of the pine forest was quite sandy, so I did manage to get a little dreaded sand in my shoes.

That forest had a few sculptures scattered about.

There were also a few benches. I sat down for a spell on a bench that already had a nattily attired young gentleman sitting on one end of it. I probably should have asked him if he minded me sitting on the other end. But I didn’t think he’d answer me. He was made of metal.

I continued along the beaches until Amok Beach, where my final destination was.

Coffee Street

When I’d read that Gangneung was considered the coffee capital of Korea and that it had a coffee museum and a coffee street, to be honest, I was expecting more from the coffee street. It’s a block or so of a street that has shops on only one side of the street because the other side of the street is Amok Beach.

The vast majority of the shops on the street are cafés. Few of them looked particularly special. The street holds an outlet of Coffee Cupper, another outlet of which had the coffee museum that I visited this morning. I didn’t go into its café on the coffee street.

The café I patronized sold its offerings on the ground floor and had seating with windows looking out onto the beach on each of the next two floors up. I had an espresso and a pastry. The espresso was definitely one of the better ones I’ve had in Korea, but that’s not a high bar to jump over.

And then I headed back to my hotel.

Gangneung Summary

I didn’t spend much time in Gangneung. So I don’t have a lot to say here.

Generally, it’s a very pleasant city, with a beautiful, forested mountain range in the background. Gangneung has at least a couple of tree-lined streets (maybe more, but I didn’t walk around enough to know), which I haven’t seen a lot of in Korea. And there are some fabulous parks and beautiful beaches to stroll along and through.

My guidebooks don’t mention much more to see and do here beyond what I did see and do, and not even all of that. They do mention some side trips to nearby places, but due to my short time here, I didn’t bother researching how easy or difficult it would be to get to them without a car.

But even without many more listed things to see and do, I still would have liked more time in Gangneung. There are, as I said, some beautiful parts to it. More time in them would be great. And, I would have liked to explore the coast more. Beaches are grand, but I love a rocky shore. I would have liked to have had the chance to find out if there are any of those within the easily accessible Gangneung area.

At least one, and maybe two or three, days here probably would have been terrific.