Jirisan National Park is Korea’s first national park and Gurye-gun is one of the entrances to this popular national park that stretches over several provinces. Jeollanam-do is known for having a lot of delicious kinds of food, and Gurye was no exception. During my two days in Gurye, I was able to visit some great historical sites, enjoy nature, and just have a relaxing time away from the city. Getting to Gurye I took the train from Suwon and the Mugunghwa took about 4.5 hours to reach Guryegu Station. Checking online, you can catch the KTX from either Seoul or Yongsan Station and it takes about 2.5 hours. Tickets for the KTX from Seoul or Yongsan Station are about 41,500 won for a one-way ticket. If you take the Mugunghwa like I did, the tickets are 23,600 won. Personally I was okay with the Mugunghwa train as it allowed me to take a nap on the way down and saved on travel costs. One thing to note is that the train station is located outside of the city center; there were some restaurants around the train station, but there weren’t any cafes or convenience stores nearby. There is also the Gurye Bus Terminal located in the city center. They have buses going to Seoul’s Nambu Bus Terminal and it takes about 3 hours. There are buses that go every 1-3 hours and the tickets cost 29,000 won. Getting Around Gurye If you’re traveling light (just a backpack), you can rent non-electric Kakao Bikes for pretty cheap and there’s a nice bike path that goes along the Somjin River from the train station to the city center. There are city buses, but the routes seemed to be pretty infrequent, so I ended up doing a combination of calling taxis and walking. Day One Itinerary From the train station, I took a taxi from Guryegu Station to Osan Mountain to visit the Saseongam Hermitage. The taxi ended up costing about 17,000 won. The Saseongam Hermitage was founded during the Baekje Dynasty and it was really cool to see some of the buildings built right into the side of the mountain. From here, you can also get a great view of Gurye, the Somjin River, and I was able to see Jirisan and several other mountains from up here. Getting down, I decided to take the hiking trail down, taking a break part way through to eat some kimbap. It took about two hours to hike down from the top. From Osan/Saseongam Hermitage, I took a taxi from here to the Jirisan Mountain History and Culture Center. The taxi costs were about 13,000 won and the museum wasn’t far from my accommodations for the night. The museum costs 2,000 won for adults and 1000-1500 for children depending on their age. I spent about an hour here and they had the three different buildings separated by different themes. This museum was nice if you want to learn more about how people in Gurye lived and their reliance on the river and mountain. One thing I really wanted to check out was the Wildlife Conservation Center that’s a part of the Jirisan National Park. Unfortunately, you have to make reservations online on the National Park website ahead of time and they only allow guided tours two times per day to see the bears and other animals in the conservation center. I definitely want to come back here and see the bears. There are several pensions and hotels right at the entrance of Jirisan National Park, and I ended up spending around 70,000 on a 1 bedroom for the night. There are about 3-4 pensions/hotels right next to each other and this was a good location because of the nearby restaurants and its proximity to Hwaeomsa Temple/Jirisan National Park. After browsing the popular local dishes in Gurye, I ended up finding the restaurant Yewon nearby. There is a whole temple food street here with various restaurants offering local dishes. I ended up having the Sanchae Jeongshik or mountain vegetable table d’hote. This dish had a lot of various wild vegetables and mushrooms grown and found in the Jirisan Mountain area. They have a minimum of two people (32,000 won), so if you’re a solo traveler like me, you will end up having to order for two if you want to try it out. They also had other dishes like Sanchae Bibimbap that might be better suited for a solo traveler, but I really wanted to try out the different dishes. Day Two Early in the morning, I headed out to do some trekking within Jirisan National Park. I really wanted to check out Hwaeomsa Temple. Hwaeomsa Temple is the largest of the temples on Jirisan and was established during the Baekje Dynasty. It took about 30-45 minutes from the entrance and the temple is home to four national treasures. I also learned that this area was also one of the first places in Korea to cultivate tea bushes with seeds that came from Tang China. They have a monument off of one of the paths and it was cool to see wild tea bushes growing within the bamboo forests. After checking out of the hotel, I took another taxi back to the city center (10,000 won) to visit the Gurye 5-day market. They open on the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd, and 28th of each month. Walking through the market, there were various vegetables, fish, meat, and other products from all over Jeollanam-do. I ended up getting some mandu and kkwabaegi (7,000 won) for brunch while I walked around Gurye. The bus terminal is located just a couple of blocks away from the 5-day market. From here, I ended up doing some walking for about 30 minutes and ended up stopping at the Korea Pressed Flower Museum. Tickets cost 2,000 won and they don’t allow photos inside. This was one of the highlights of the trip. I would describe the museum as more of an art gallery. The different Korean and international artists essentially used dried flowers instead of paint to make really detailed “paintings”. There are also several centers and museums next door and at the Eco Center, I got to check out some of the different wildflowers and other plants that are found in Jirisan. Afterwards, I ended up walking another 25 minutes to reach the Somjin River Bamboo Forest Path. A lot of locals were here doing their daily exercising and it connected to the river bike path mentioned earlier. It was a really great way to end the two-day trip in Gurye. From here, the taxi took less than ten minutes to get back to Guryegu Station (7,620 won). Outside of transportation costs from Suwon to Gurye, I ended up spending around 170,000 won on getting around Gurye, eating, and trying out different experiences.