Busan, Korea

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Well I just took the perfect 2 day trip to Busan, Korea. This place was absolutely gorgeous! On Tuesday Mike and I boarded a train (which took 6 hours) to the second largest city in Korea. Once we arrived there we walked around the train terminal for several minutes scooping out the place. Once we talked to the tourist information people we walked to catch a bus to the beach that we were staying on for the next few days. The experience on the bus was rather interesting. Being a college student I was used to jamming in as many people on a bus as possible in the mornings to get to class. That was like three spots of crowdedness. This bus was so packed that I swore there were people's limbs hanging out of all little open spots. It was quite a riot to see the both of us in there. I got stuck at the front of the bus basically in the luggage rack on the top, while Mike was stuck in the middle of the crowd barely hanging onto anything. See that is the other thing about the buses, you have to hang on to something otherwise you will fall over because people drive so crazy here. Once we made it to a stop that look remotely close to our hotel we got and walked the rest of the way. At one point I looked for Mike in the sea of people and all I saw were people passed out on the bus and Mike trying to make eye contact with me. It was to funny!
Once we arrived at the beach, we began searching for our hotel. After walking for about 40 min. we decided to go ask for directions. Both of us figured that a nicer hotel would have more English speaking people in it so we went into the Paradise hotel. The lady that helped us was very friendly and showed us that we just went in the wrong direction. As we left the hotel, we book looked up at several buildings and sure enough we found our hotel. After we checked in, Mike and I headed to our room. I was so tired from the night before (seriously only 4 hours of sleep) that I crashed right away, and Mike hung out. We ventured to dinner after the nap and ate some Korean Vegetable dish and then we went back to the room. I immediately passed out and Mike did shortly after. The next day we went and ate breakfast at the hotel (it came with the room) then off to the beach. I have seen some beautiful beaches before, but this place was amazing. There were so many people that came and played all day long. It was gorgeous. As we walked up to the beach we were offered a towel to sit on for 5000 won (a little more than $5 American) so we took it and ended up being placed under an umbrella right in the front row. This was def. worth the money that we paid because we were able to sit and people watch all day long with a front row seat. I have learned on this trip that Koreans cannot handle the sun, so much that many elders cover everything up entirely and the young people constantly walk around with umbrellas because they cannot stand the sun. The beach was painted with different colors because of all the umbrellas that were in use from everyone on the beach. I was very surprised to hear many different languages on the beach. I never realized that this place was a great place to take a family on a vacation. There were lots and lots of families out and about on the beach and it was fun to watch them play in the sand and water. We stayed at the beach for 5 hours and then decided to go on a walk. As we ventured off to a lighthouse in the far distance, we stumbled upon the 2005 APEC meetings building. It was really neat to see this building because at one point and time there were so many important officials that sat in this building forming certain economic policies. We walked around the building and took pictures around it as well. It was an awesome discovery. After this we walked back to the hotel and watched some movies, then went to bed. Thursday we woke up and hopped a subway back to the train station. We boarded a KTX (which is the fastest train in Korea) and went back to our home away from home of Seoul.

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