[Part 1] 202. Nonsan Strawberry Festival 논산딸기축제

I was up the earliest this morning because the cows in the shed beside our room woke me up -.-

Breakfast

Where we spent the night

The main building

At 11am, we finally left Jenna’s place and her dad drove us all the way to Nonsan! We were supposed to take a bus from Cheongyang or Daejeon to get to Nonsan, which is in between both places, but we weren’t sure how to get there. Her father was quite worried and hence, he decided to drive us all the way there and the journey took about an hour.

Traffic was quite bad because of the large crowd of visitors and since it rained all day long yesterday, the ground was VERY MUDDY. Actually, Jenna’s dad works in the agriculture business and knows quite a lot about food festivals and all. So he called up some of his friends to find out more about the Nonsan Strawberry Festival. According to him, a good time to go to a festival is between the 2nd day and the 2nd last day, and the best time is on the 2nd day. Today was the last day of the festival so certain items were already sold out e.g. strawberry makkori :( 

The mud :( 

At the Nonsan Strawberry Festival’s main event area, what you have are rows and rows of stalls selling strawberries, food items made of strawberry e.g. strawberry rice cake, strawberry 호떡, strawberry juice, strawberry everything, etc. Non-strawberry-related food and products are also sold too. And then you have the handicraft stalls too and the longest queue for a stall was for the temporary tattoos/face art for the kids. The 3 of us got excited about making our own soaps :) Jenna and I made our own soaps at a stall for 3,000원 each and after walking down the stretch, we chanced upon another soap-making stall and that stall had even nicer designs so we made more soaps. You have to wait for 20 minutes for the soap to set before collecting it from the stall.

The 1st soap-making store that we came across

The kind ajumma who later guided us in our soap-making

The mold for my soap

The bottom of my soap was perfect UNTIL I decided to add one drop more -.- 

Selecting fillings for our ice cream soap. I should have thought about colour coordination but I didn’t and just thought of choosing one of every colour -.-  My soap turned out really bad :’(

Strawberry 호떡 for lunch. The ajumma gave me 2 pieces instead of 1! Maybe she can tell that I eat a lot. 

Valentina so cute! 

Performance by the Mr. Pizza crew

After spending about 2 hours at the festival, we decided to head back to Daejeon. It was almost impossible to get a cab near the event area because of the road blocks, so we walked to the bus terminal. We didn’t have a map of Nonsan and basically just followed the crowd and relied on Google map to find our way there. The bus terminal isn’t that far from the event area though, say 15-20 minutes away? The bus ticket back to Daejeon cost 4,600원 and the journey took about an hour. Jenna bought wet wipes from a convenience store and we spent the 1st half our bus journey cleaning our muddy shoes :’(

Upon arrival at the bus terminal in Daejeon, we took a cab to Jungangno to shop at Wonderplace where I ended up buying a dress and 2 blouses before going to The Kitchen, above Sung Sim Dang bakery for dinner. I really love the shopping area in Jungangno! And the underground shopping area is bigger than Seomyeon’s, making it less claustrophobic to shop.

After dinner, we went to The Oven Story cafe, which is above The Flying Pan restaurant, also owned by Sung Sim Dang. The cafe’s Jenna’s favourite one in Daejeon and I can understand why. Had a jasmine tea there for 5,000원. 

Ring the bell to get the waiter/waitress’ attention

Jenna’s friend who joined us for dinner too

My soap…the girl assisting us stuffed another yellow rose into my soap, ruining the design because I now have 2 yellow roses on the same side while the leaf went to the back :( 

Jenna and Valentina’s pretty colour-coordinated soaps

Love Jenna’s soap!

The first soap that I made. Smells really good too! 

Underground shopping centre

From Jungangno, we took the subway to Daejeon Station because we were running out of time and had to rush to catch our train. We were supposed to take an earlier train but we wanted to spend more time at the cafe so we cancelled the tickets and bought another 3 more at a later time.

Daejeon subway

Daejeon Station

Here’s a picture of my OOTD since it was so cold today that I had my coat on almost all the time.

I had a great weekend in Daejeon, Cheongyang and Nonsan. I definitely have to go back to Daejeon again to shop and buy more biscuits from Sung Sim Dang!