After the cold weather we'd been experiencing in Cheonan, we decided to head for the southernmost (and, we hoped, warmest) city on the Korean peninsula for the last five days of our term break on Wednesday, Dec. 28. While we had planned to travel to Seoul the night before with a few perishable items to leave in the fridge in our new apartment, on Tuesday afternoon we found out our new apartment wasn't ready for us yet. So we stayed one more night in Cheonan. We left our apartment for the last time at 7 the next morning and caught a taxi to the KTX (Korean bullet train) station. There we traded in our tickets for the 10 o'clock Seoul-Busan train for an earlier train right from Cheonan and got reimbursed for the Seoul-Cheonan portion! By 7:50 we were on our train and two hours later, about the time we would have been leaving Seoul, we disembarked in Busan. We used our guidebook and an English Busan tourist map to find the hotel we'd picked out back in Cheonan and unknowingly chose a beautiful area of Busan - Haeundae Beach - for our stay!
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| Departure and arrival at Cheonan and Busan KTX stations - Ali |
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| Ali loved these smiling-pig planters along a street in Haeundae |
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| Our first glimpse of Busan's famous Haeundae Beach - Ali |
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| Zigzag boardwalk |
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| Bunny statue welcomes walkers |
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| 1.5 km-long Haeundae Beach |
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| Princess Hwangok (AKA the Little Mermaid) looking toward her home country, the mythical land of Naranda |
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| Fisherman - Ali |
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| Pre-sunset colours |
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| Local cats entertaining boardwalk pedestrians |
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| Seaside boardwalk from Haeundae Beach to Dongbaek Island (click to see full-size) |
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| Dongbaek Island lighthouse |
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| Field of buoys - shellfish nets |
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| Buddhist-themed gazebo overlooking the ocean |
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| Sign telling how Haeundae got its name (we never did find the rock with the inscribed characters) - Ali |
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| Gwangan Bridge at sunset |
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Nurimaru APEC House (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) - Ali
Nurimaru is a combination of two Korean words, nuri meaning world and maru meaning summit |
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| Birds - Ali |
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| Camellia, the official flower of Haeundae-gu. Dongbaek Island is thick with camellia flowers and pine trees. |
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| Sunset reflected |
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| Small Buddhist pavilion at the summit of Dongbaek Island |
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| After our hike we headed inside to the underground Busan Aquarium - Ali |
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| Glass bottom boat rides and the view from above the Underwater Tunnel |
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| Even the tank was decorated for Christmas! |
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| Ali couldn't get enough of the sharks |
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| Shark and grouper |
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| Scoliosis shark? Ali felt so bad for this apparently disabled shark and we wondered how it got injured |
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| Sunfish, a very flat fish |
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| Ali's favourite type of shark, the hammerhead! (they were fast little guys) |
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| Cryopreserved great hammerhead shark |
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| Great hammerheads are usually 11.5 ft long, but the largest on record was 20 ft. long. They are heavily fished for shark fin soup. |
For pictures and commentary about our other days in Busan, click the links below.
Yay for sight-seeing! That aquarium looks amazing!!!
ReplyDeletei am so impressed with all of these great photos.
ReplyDeleteif i was to choose a favourite it would have to be the lighthouse ones.
just for the subject, but i really really enjoyed seeing all of them.
thank you so much.
Awesome pictures! Great to see what you were up to on your vacation!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful and magical place! You lucky ducks! (*_*) xo
ReplyDeleteWow! So many upgrades and new places to visit since I was there in 1975-1976. Korea has come a long way since then :)
ReplyDelete