last night

We ended up with some extra free time on our last night in South Korea. I hadn't had a chance to make it into the "coastal cluster" in Gangneung where most of the ice and area events were held, so my coworker Victor and I ended up making a last minute trek in to check it out. We headed to the beach where the Fire Art Festival was located. For the month long fest, the beach was covered with pretty amazing huge sculptures that were built to be burned. I was hoping since it was the last night that we might catch a burning of some, but it didn't seem to be happening. (I think dry weather conditions kept them from doing the burning as often as they hoped, but am not sure on that.) The street along the beach was filled with seafood markets and restaurants, but we found ourselves drawn to a Korean BBQ place instead. After a lot of meat and soju bombs, we wandered to the lakefront to catch some strange and interesting light and music show, and then somehow ended back at the BBQ place. Go figure. We never did make it to the Olympic Park, but we knew it was closing early that night because of closing ceremonies and we were enjoying ourselves too much to move. We caught a midnight bullet train back to our home base in the mountains and caught up with some of our coworkers who worked the other shift for one last beer. There's tons more to share from South Korea that I never managed to post, but I'm going to have to do that later as backtrack posts (please feel free to prod me on that so I don't let it go undone forever!) And with that, another Games is in the books. It's always great to work with the truly amazing, fun, and nice crew of folks that I'm so lucky to get to be a part of every Olympics, but South Korea was also a great host and a great place to be for it. If you have the chance to visit, you should.