Today was my first whole day in Busan and I first went to Gamcheon Culture Village. I went there with bus and it was my first time using Korean local buses. It was really convenient way of moving around, even though the bus stops were announced only in Korean. In the Gamcheon Culture Village there are lot of colorful small houses and it is built on a hillside. The entire village is an art and tourist site and it's full of little alleys. In the village I went to eat to a restaurant called Daebakjip. There I got to choose the meat I wanted to eat and then I fried the meat myself and wrapped the slices to a lettuce. After that I went to Dadaepo Beach. It is a sand beach and there were lot ... read more

Todays plan was that we would be going to the DMZ where there is the border of the two Koreas. We were picked up by a car from our guesthouse and taken to the place where the bus was waiting. Unfortunately we were told that the main attraction was closed because of the MERS outbreak and instead we went to the Gangwha Peace Observatory. On the way to the observatory our guide Mr. SP "special present" Hong (he wanted us to call him SP rather than mister Hong) told us about the Demilitarized zone. He told us that the DMZ was established in 1953, it's 4 km wide, there are about 1 million soldiers altogether, and 2 million landmines. The Peace observatory is the nearest observatory to North Korea. First we saw a 5 minute video ... read more

Today we visited quite a few places. First we went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which is the largest of the five grand palaces remaining in Seoul. It was built in 1395. We just walked around the palace grounds and took pictures. Also we saw a re-enact of Sumunjang changing of the guard ceremony, where these men were dressed in traditional Korean clothes and played some traditional instruments :) After the palace we went to eat this very popular dessert Bingsu, which is shaved ice with toppings. We took a berry bingsu, which had strawberries, blueberries and red beans. Next we went to Hongdae Street near Hongik University subway station. There we were hunting for Rilakkuma teddy bear plushie for Tiina :) Unfortunately we didn't find it from there so we continued to Ewha Womans University area. ... read more

After 15 hours of waiting and flying we finally arrived to Incheon International Airport at 10.35am. We flew with Turkish Airlines and we had to change flights in Istanbul, Turkey. We left the airport and went straight to the city center of Seoul by Airport Express train AREX and it took us about 43min. Then we went to Kimchee Seoul Station Guesthouse, where me and my friend Tiina will stay for the next 7 days. There we were met by Scott who showed us our room. We stayed in our room only a while because we didn't want to fall asleep. We decided to go to the Myeongdong shopping street to get something to eat and to do some shopping. We went to eat to this small restaurant called Neul Bom. I took a dish named ... read more