Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Busan Trip

We spent the weekend in Busan (on the southern part of South Korea) with some co-workers and friends of theirs. There were about 30 people who went on the trip, and since leaving America, we have not spent this much time with this many foreigners! Beaches, beer, and sun... what more could we want!

Friday night we took the late night bullet train down to Busan. When we got to Busan, we checked into our love motel (which was much nicer than we expected) and headed to the beach to shoot off some fireworks and drink some beer and soju. Unfortunately, the camera stayed in the love motel so we didn't get any pics of that night.

The next day I awoke nice and early to head to the fish market and the shopping district with the girls. Mark proceeded to spend the entire day on the beach with no sunscreen. By the end of the day he looked like a lobster!

Here are some pictures of the fish market. There were a ton of stalls like this where we could buy fresh seafood.



In addition, there were other random carts, like this apple cart all over the place. I love Korean apples, they're so big and taste sweeter than American apples for some reason.



The fish market backed up to this pier and the ocean. Talk about fresh seafood!


We went to a little restaurant by the fish market for some sushi, sashimi, and grilled fish. It was really good.

After that, we went to this huge shopping district with a bunch of little boutiques and well-known Western stores. I ended up buying a summery dress.

The shopping area had a bunch of food carts all over. Apparently, Busan is famous for its green onion pancakes, so of course, we had to try it. Here's the lady cooking them. She basically took some pancake batter, mixed it with green onions, and fried them on this cart. When we ordered one, she cut them up (for easy chopstick eating) and drizzled a soy sauce mixture on it. It was tasty, but a bit too greasy to eat a lot of.


Then we went to get strawberry smoothies from this lady. What she did shocked us... as she was pouring the strawberries into the blender, one fell on the ground. And as we were watching her, she picked it OFF THE GROUND and threw it into the blender. It was kind of funny because one of the girls with me was a germaphobe and was pretty grossed out by that. But the smoothies did end up being pretty good... Ah well, gotta eat a little dirt before we die, right?


There was this statue that said "Free Hugs." So of course, I had to take advantage. :)


We then rejoined Mark on the beach. Isn't the water and sand beautiful? We want to take another trip down here when it warms up a bit more.

For dinner we went to some small huts on the beach that sold soft shell crab, oysters, and shrimp. They pulled them right out of the aquarium and cooked them for us. Delicious!


This final shot is just to make all you Midwesterners jealous. It's gorgeous isn't it?!??!


So, that's a short summary of how we spent our Easter weekend. Hope you all enjoyed your Easters as much as we did!

2 comments:

Julia Goolia said...

SO jealous. I love the free hugs most of all, or maybe the beach. Great shots!

Mom said...

Kim, I'm so glad you shared Easter with the kids. I bet they had fun decorating the eggs and the little baskets Anne made were darling. Tell her I said that she is very creative! Your trip to Busan sounds like it was fun. The ocean is very inviting and I'm sure you'll find yourselves heading that way again. I loved the Pizza Hut left-overs box! How nice!!!