Busan 21st April

 Our first, and so far only, day in South Korea. Busan is a big city but built on a river delta and several islands, all linked by big bridges. As it is also very hilly many people live in high rise apartments. Usual drill, shuffled onto the bus and first to a temple. Haedong Yonggungsa is a Buddhist temple by the sea on the eastern side of the city, a tunnel and a couple of bridges away. It was very crowded and also raining lightly. So we shuffled down a lot of stairs, around the complex and back up again. The crowds didn’t really allow us a chance to take it in, and then we were off again.

The next stop was Dongbaekseom Island. This was very pleasant – it’s mostly a heavily treed park and we walked around a big loop. The main building is an old APEC conference building that for some reason the Koreans keep in original condition. There were also views of the city though these were largely obscured by rain and clouds.

Then we went to lunch in a very large buffet restaurant with an entertaining variety of food, close by in the Marina district. Though I think we may have had enough of eating too much. Then over a big bridge to our final stop of the day, a seafood market and adjacent market district.

The Jagalchi seafood market takes up a couple of blocks. I’m not generally into seafood markets, as they are smelly and unattractive, though at least this was a bit more interesting with a variety of live fish in baskets and tanks. Across the road was the Gukje market district, lots of small shops in narrow laneways. This was interesting at first until you realise they’re all selling the same junk. So we were happy to finally go back to the ship.




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