Wanderer: Busan!

Last weekend I went to Busan with my coteacher Adam. Busan was a city that was on my bucket list for Korea. At Wonderland we were given Monday off this week due to a teachers conference for Koreans on Monday. However, there was a catch. Adam and I had to go to the foreigner teacher’s conference on Saturday morning… So before our trip could commence, Adam and I had to go to this foreign conference in Chuncheon (20-30 min away, the capital city for our region). It kind of sucked to get up on Saturday morning but at the same time it was nice that we went on Saturday morning instead of Monday so we could have the extra time off. At our conference we met a few friends from Hongcheon that rode the bus over with us, we were both late… go figure! We shared a cab and sat by them at the meeting. Afterwards we went out to eat together. Adam and I are obsessed with Dakgalbi and Chuncheon is a great place to be if you are. They have a whole street dedicated to Dakgalbi. So naturally we ended up going there with our new friends for lunch. It was so delicious and a really fun time.

The infamous Dakgalbi Street, which I plan on coming back to shortly...

On Dakgalbi Street

YUM!

All of us together on the chickens... amazing!

We decided to take a short trip down to Busan after the meeting since we had Monday off. We ended up taking the KTX down there. I had never been on the KTX, it travels up to 302km/h or as I understand better, 187 mph (the highest we saw). When we got to Busan we went to the downtown shopping area. It was so well decorated for the holidays! I couldn’t believe it. Who knew you had to go all the way down to the southern tip of Korea to see the holiday displays. It was really fun wondering those lit up streets.

Goodbye Seoul

Streets in Busan!

The next morning we woke up bright and early so we could go see some tourist sites. We first headed to Busan tower. It was really cool; it overlooked the whole city of Busan. After looking around the area and the park that surrounded Busan tower we went over to the dried fish market. We weren’t too impressed with the market. It wasn’t anything too exciting. It was a bummer that we went during the winter and not the summer, I would’ve liked to go to the live fish market just to see it all. I hear a lot about it, not that I would ever eat any of it. But it would’ve been fun to see, my friend Kalie said I would “get a kick out of it”. She sounds just like my mom… Haha.

They had escalators because it was such a hike up to the Busan Tower, I wasn't complaining about it at all....

Busan Tower

The view of the harbor

You can see the park below

Adam and I at the top

Dried Fish Market

Later that day, Adam and I went to get our KTX tickets back to Seoul and the only ones left were First class. We had actually talked/joked on the way down about how it would be fun to go first class on the KTX just because we can and it’s not too expensive. Well, it became reality. We went first class back to Seoul. The KTX really is the way to travel. It was so nice, was a smooth ride, and very comfortable (even if you aren’t in first class). It was a short but fun weekend. My Monday day off was dedicated to writing my blog for you curious folks back home reading this. Hope you appreciated my day off as well!