Day Trip to Busan!

Sunday we were finally feeling back up to normal standards, and were itching to get out of the house, and of course it was a cold cloudy day... ugh.... but we didn't let that stop us, we had to get off our island for a day adventure, and we decided on a whim that Busan was the place to be... again. We barely saw half of the one section of town where the ferry let us off, so we decided to spend the whole day there, and make Busan a once a month thing and each time devote a day to each section instead of trying to navigate the subway all over and wasting time underground.



We went back to the nampo dong area and had a blast just walking around and trying to orient ourselves. We headed down this alley way to find the coolest little hole in the wall Cd store. We have decided we may try to buy either an Outsider album or a G-dragon cd before we go!


And even being such a long way from North Carolina, we saw this store front and jumped out of our socks! So exciting to have the best doughnuts at least availible to us in Korea. They have Dunkin Doughnuts everywhere, but we finally found a Krispy Kreme, so that suddenly makes Korea awesome in so many ways.... and it had christmas decorations and music playing so that made me love it even more!

We ended up getting a Mocha Latte and 1 chocolate custard filled for Joseph, a strawberry Jam snowman for me and 1 glazed original to share, and because we ordered a coffee, they gave us a free wreath doughnut which I think was green tea flavored... it was pretty interesting, and boy were we full after consuming so many calories, but this was our breakfast and early lunch folks!

We were not sure where we wanted to go next, so we saw a bunch of stairs and decided that we should go up them, and this is what we came across, Lanterns and a Big Buddha!

Buddha! He had a cool little fountain and everything next to him.

The stairs led to one of Busans big highlights, Busan Tower, this is the Giant Gong outside the tower.

Busan Tower with a statue of a famous General out front.

This is by far the most amazing Dragon statue I have ever seen in my life. This picture does it no justice. It was awesome. The korean word for Dragon is Yong.

We made our way up some more stairs and took a breather (Hey it was alot of stairs) and we saw a pigeon with only one leg, it is hard to tell in this picture, but I was so fascinated by the poor thing, but he hobbled around and managed to get just as much free bread a nearby korean family was tossing about, so good for him!

Finally a View from the Top. You pay 4,000 won to go take an elevator to the top of the tower, but first you have to walk through the gift shops. We totally bought a few things as well!

So after an awkward elevator ride with 6 or 7 other people you don't know you get to the Sky Bar, and then take the stairs to the Observatory! And this is what you see....

It is an amazingly huge city. It is hard to tell from the ground how big it is, but it expands so far.


The cool looking building is the Fish market that Joseph and I went to last time we were in Busan, It was a bit misty that day since it felt like it wanted to rain, but I like the hazy pictures, they make you want to curl up with a hot coffee and good book. It was really beautiful.

More Observatory

Offical top of the Tower picture. I was still a bit sick so please excuse how rough I look.

The funny part was the HUGE fly that managed to take the elevator up the tower, to the sky bar, and up the stairs to the observatory! I wonder if he paid is 4,000 won. He seemed to be enjoying the view.

Now anyone who knows joseph knows that he collects those squashed pennies that you can find all over America... and we finally found an International one, and it is totally out of order... what luck... so we decided to come back to the tower on a sunny day in the spring, so he could get a squashed penny ( well copper colored disk they provide for you since Korea has no penny in their currency. The 10 won piece is sorta copper color but it is bigger than a penny)...

More tower fun!

After spending so much money in the giftshops, we headed back down the tower and went to the Ship model museum... it was a room filled with minature models of different ships from different countries from different time periods... it was really neat to behold the craftmanship on some of these tiny ships. I am always amazed at the patience some people have to make such beautiful art. It was only one room, but we spent about an hour looking around.

Boats

This was a Mini Model of the Titanic, and they had a sign in English saying " can you find Jack and Rose?" ...Why, yes I can! *I'm on top of the world* ahhh simple pleasures. You may have to click it to see them, but they are pearched on the front of the boat.... ahh I can hear Celine singing now....

Boat

I loved the sails on this one.

A Steam Boat... Huckleberry Finn anyone?

Sometimes the Korean translations were better than the boat model.... a "Deep Sae Squid Jigging vessel"... I love it.

They also had cool Boat items that you could touch and use.

The Thing on the right made a loud honking noise, so of course with kids hanging out we got to hear it about 50 times ( and then tried it ourselves hahaha)

Even the sails were wooden on this one... it was excellent.

Korean Coast Guard.

After the ship model museum, I must have forgotten I had a camera, because that was the last of my pictures. But here is a rundown of what we did for the rest of the day.

1.) we went to an art gallery where you were not allowed to take pictures ( hence why I put my camera away and promptly forgot about it) but it was really interesting to see the local artist at work, it was very similar to things I used to see in the art galleries in Downtown Raleigh, so it is interesting to me that some themes can transcend languages... many artist still use the same methods to get ideas across regardless of what culture or language they use... Which is comforting.

2.) We had dinner at McDonalds... why?, because we didn't want to spend too much money, But it was still good!

3.) Missed the Movie we wanted to see. Korea movie times are sometimes impossible to figure out. We wanted to go see A Christmas Carol with Jim Carey, but it played for about a week on geoje, and then was gone. We missed it the first weekend and were not granted a second chance. Darn the luck, we figured since Busan was bigger they might be playing it longer,since it is a Christmas movie and all, but no luck. We missed it and now we have to wait till we are back in the states to see it or maybe rent it on DVD when it comes out here.

4.) Went shopping in a few stores, but didn't buy anything because we were depressed about missing the Jim Carey movie.

5.) Walked all the way back to the Ferry station only to find the ferry we wanted to take had been sold out and we had no way home.

6.) Haggled with some taxi drivers in terrible broken English to try and get a ride home ( which was impossible since the cheapest taxi was 100, 0000 won to Geoje and we had about 50,000 on us...)

7.) Made friends with one said taxi driver who agreed to drive us to the bus station for less than normal so we could catch a bus home.

8.) Were assured he was the best driver in town as he ran a red light, cut across traffic and almost hit a pedestrian

9.) Proved he actually was the best driver by getting us to the bus station with a few minutes to spare.

10.) had to wait in line for a THIRD bus to get to Tong Yeong.

11.) got on another bus to Gohyeon that got stuck in traffic, and I had to sit next to a Korean who could not stop sneezing.... (poor guy)

12.) finally made it home and didn't have to sleep in a bus station.

WOW, what a crazy busy day. Thankfully we made it, and now have a friend in Busan who drives a taxi. It was a long day, but it was so good to get out of the house. And next time we will buy our ferry tickets much earlier....

Lesson Learned.