Two days in Gangneung, where the capital rides the rails to the sea

The train from Seoul spends most of its two hours inside mountains, and then, somewhere past the last tunnel, the dark opens onto the East Sea and half the carriage looks up from their phones at once. Gangneung (강릉) is where the capital comes to stand at the edge of the country, drink coffee facing the water, and eat tofu the colour of cloud.

The line that made the sea a day trip

The fast train leaves from Seoul Station (서울역) and from Cheongnyangni (청량리) on the city's east side, and for most of the ride there is nothing to see but the inside of a mountain. The Gyeonggang line (경강선, Gyeonggang-seon) bores straight through the Taebaek range, past the Jinbu (진부) stop that empties out the ski crowds in winter, before it lets you off at Gangneung Station (강릉역) a short bus ride from the coast.

Take the left-hand seat going out if you can; that is the side the sea arrives on. Times and fares shift with the season and with how far ahead you book, so check the Korail site or app rather than trusting a screenshot from someone's blog. On a summer weekend the returning trains fill early, and the mistake most day trippers make is leaving the seat home unbooked until they are standing on the platform.

Coffee with the tide coming in

Koreans will tell you Gangneung is where the country learned to take coffee seriously, and the claim holds up when you stand on the Anmok (안목) waterfront and count the roasters. What began as a row of coffee vending machines facing the breakwater has become a street of espresso bars, each with its own house roast and a window onto the same grey-blue water.

Order at the counter, carry the cup across the road, and drink it on the sea wall with the gulls working the tideline. Some places roast in the back and will talk beans with you if the room is quiet; others just want to move the queue along. Prices track whatever a careful cup costs in Seoul these days, which is to say not cheap, so read the board before you commit.

The sea does the view; the cafe only has to make the coffee.

Chodang, and tofu made with seawater

Inland from the coffee, the Chodang sundubu village (초당순두부마을, Chodang sundubu maeul) makes its tofu the way the fishing families always did, curdling the soy milk with clean seawater drawn from the East Sea instead of the usual bittern. The result is softer and faintly sweet, and it comes two ways: as sundubu, a loose warm curd you spoon straight from the bowl, or plain and unpressed with a dish of soy and chilli on the side.

Go for an early lunch, before the buses arrive, when the tofu is still coming warm from the back kitchens. The village takes its name from the pen name of a Joseon-era scholar whose family lived here, and a few of the houses have been serving the same dish for generations. Which one is best is a fight locals will happily have with you; pick the one with the shortest wait and no photographs of celebrities in the window.

순두부는 간수 대신 바닷물로 굳혀야 초당 것이라고들 한다.

North to Jumunjin

A local bus runs up the coast to Jumunjin (주문진), a working fishing port that has not bothered to prettify itself much. The market sells what came in that morning — squid (오징어, ojingeo) still bright, flatfish, crates of dried pollack — and the covered lanes smell of brine and drying fish the whole length.

Come early if you want the auction, which happens when the boats land rather than on any timetable you can look up. Otherwise the pleasure is slower: a bowl of hot squid-and-vegetable soup, a paper cup of fish-cake broth from a stall, and the breakwater where the gulls are so used to being fed they will take a shrimp cracker from a raised hand. The port lanes are not a museum, so watch for the trucks and the forklifts that still run the place.

Pine, lake, and the long beach

Back toward town, Gyeongpo (경포) hands you the calmer half of Gangneung: a wide lake with a walking-and-cycling path around it, the old Gyeongpodae (경포대) pavilion looking out over the water, and a broad pine forest that keeps the wind off the beach behind it. Rent a bike near the lake and the loop takes under an hour at a wandering pace.

A short way inland, Ojukheon (오죽헌) is a preserved scholar's house named for the black-stemmed bamboo (오죽, ojuk) that grows around it, quieter than its place on the banknote would suggest. In the pine shade between lake and sea, families spread mats and the cyclists slow down; this is the part of the day that has no queue and asks nothing of you.

Going, and going wrong

The KTX from Seoul is the obvious way in and takes roughly two hours; confirm the schedule and book seats through Korail, especially for the ride back on a weekend. Once in Gangneung the sights sit apart from each other — coast, village, lake — so plan on local buses or a taxi between them rather than walking, and use Naver Map or Kakao Map, since foreign navigation apps do not route well here. Late spring and early autumn give you the sea without the July crush or the winter wind coming off the water.

For costs and opening times — the tofu houses, the grounds at Ojukheon, the bike rental — ask on the spot or check the Gangneung city tourism pages, because they change and no blog keeps up. The one mistake to avoid is treating this as a single dash to one beach for a photograph; the town rewards the slower version, coffee to tofu to pine, and punishes the traveller who tried to fit it between two trains.