Eric and Stephanie's Korean Adventure: A Weekend at Haeundae Beach

We took the KTX train down to Busan this weekend. Busan is the second largest city in Korea (and really the only other major city in Korea), located on the southeast coast of the peninsula. While on the train we were able to see what Korea looks like outside of the city. Yes, there is country in Korea. Many green hills and of course the majority of the flat country land is made up of large rice fields. The train took us three hours from Seoul Station to Busan Station where we hopped the subway over to our hotel on Haeundae Beach, one of the most popular beaches in Korea. After dropping our backpacks in the hotel we headed straight for the beach. It appeared that many, many other people (I'd say mostly foreigners) were spending their long weekend at the same place. The beach was beautiful and the weather was perfect. It's not a very long beach but still a good walk up and down it with plenty of people watching and sunbathing along the way. There is a big sand castle festival next weekend but some sand artists already had a good start on their creations so we were able to admire them as well. After dinner we headed back to the beach with our books and spent the evening relaxing by the sea. There was even a small firework show coming from a boat not too far from shore.

We spent the majority of our Sunday on the beach also. On one end of the beach was a nice wooden pathway that took us along a scenic path, across a suspension bridge and to a small lighthouse where you could get good views of the beach, the city and Gwangan Bridge. In the afternoon it got warm enough that we even ventured into the sea to cool off (though it was quite chilly so it didn't take long to be cooled off!) We did some more relaxing on the beach and tried a local Korean BBQ restaurant for dinner which was very delicious! We were also proud of ourselves as we ordered completely in Korean and must have had decent enough pronunciation to get everything we wanted. Once again after dinner we did more reading and relaxing on the beach into the night. We also walked back to the lighthouse to get a view of Gwangan Bridge lit up at night.

Even after staying out late on the beach Sunday night I decided I needed to get up early and see the sun rise on our last morning. So at 4:45 I started my walk to the beach. Unfortunately there were still many of those foreigners that give all foreigners a bad reputation out and about, but I was able to find a quiet spot with only a few fishermen and other photographers to watch the sun come up behind the city before going back to bed. Eric's cousin Matt lives in Busan so we had breakfast and walked the beach with him, his wife, their two kids and his mom who was also in town visiting. We then headed back to Busan Station and returned to Seoul Station (where we greeted with rain and humidity unlike the nice weather at the beach!) All in all we had a very nice relaxing weekend getaway to another part of the country!