What a fun day we had in Busan, Korea!
We arranged a private guide through Tours by Locals and were picked up right on time at our ship. I had a couple of agendas for the day, but first, we saw a bit of Busan. We were impressed with this modern city, surrounded by hills and soaring blocks of apartment buildings. Our guide, Frank said it was Korea’s answer to San Francisco and that description fit the hilly streets.
About 20 years ago, we spent a few overnight hours in the Busan airport and were super impressed with its high-tech, modern ambiance. The city, home to about 3.5 million residents, paid off that initial impression being both attractive and colorful.
We started the day off with a visit to the Gamcheon Culture Village, a formerly poverty-stricken area with no power that was transformed into a veritable canvas for local artists, creating a vibrant neighborhood filled with shops and food vendors as well as homes.
If you have ever run into Korean groups while traveling, you know they love to take posed pics and this area is an extremely popular photo-op destination. Some spots even had lines of people waiting their turn to strike a pose. We saw young women in local costumes, a mural tribute to the two local members of KPop Super Stars BTS, and our first cat sighting this trip (surprising for countries so in love with cats).
We also learned to pose the Korean way – making a sign for love (vs the overused sign for peace).
The Jagalchi Fish Market was another famous local site we took in. The first floor was loaded with every sort of live fish and shellfish you can imagine. Upstairs on the second floor, you could purchase processed fish, but more significantly, you could dine in one of the dozens of small restaurants cooking up the fresh catches of the day. It smelled sooooo delicious.
One of my goals was to try an authentic Korean BBQ meal and Frank took us to one of his favorite places, unique to Busan. I could never get anyone to tell me how to translate the name, but I did take a business card in Korean if anyone needs to know.
Needless to say, the meal was incredible! Frank did all the tableside cooking, explained the side dishes, and showed us how to eat. We had several types of meat and pork dishes. There was a soft tofu soup that was absolutely delicious and the Ssamjang red bean paste was wonderful. It was unlike any Korean food I have ever eaten. My biggest problems were trying to manage the large bites of food Frank kept urging me to take and manipulating the squared-off metal chopsticks that were very tricky to grip.
Then we headed out of town to the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival. I found out about this online and was happy the weather was nice and we could go. Good news – we did see cherry blossoms! Although not in full bloom, the festival was in full force and the trees were lovely. We started at Gyeonghwa Station. If you’ve ever seen a pic of a train riding through arches of cherry blossoms, this is the place. These trees still had a way to go, so we moved on to the Yeojwacheon Stream. The trees were lovely in this area and the streets were packed with young people (and lots more posing for pics – but now, we were too). There were all sorts of shops and every type of food available, although I didn’t find any Diet Coke. Frank brought us some fish-shaped pastries with cream and red bean paste, a very tasty treat. The festival also had information booths for a wide variety of causes such as Korean unification and pet adoption. Attractive portable toilet trailers had also been brought in and staged up and down the area, so there was never a line. Beautiful and impressive.
The festival was more than an hour outside Busan and we drove on some impressive super highways to get there. I’ve already mentioned in my last post that I don’t like bridges and since I did that post there has been the horrible bridge accident in Maryland. But now, here we were riding on a double-decker bridge and also on the craziest full-circle elevated bridge access road I’ve ever seen. Time for my yoga breathing.
I liked the port bridge much better about 10 PM, when viewed from our stateroom, under an almost full moon, with electric lights the colors of the rainbow running across and up and down the span.