Holiday Weekend in Busan

For our last school day off until New Years, three of us decided that we would take a trip to Busan! Busan is a port city on the bottom right side of Korea:

So opposite side of the country from Songdo and Incheon, but it only takes 2 1/2 hours to get there by train! Such a small country. We left early Saturday morning and were able to check into our hostel a little after 1 pm. The place we were staying was really tricky to find, but Koreans are nice about helping foreigners out that after a few tries we were shown the right way. It was a really cute place:

Our bunk beds:

Little Kitchen area:

And some reaaallly steep stairs to get up to it, with Cassy:

After we checked in and dropped off our bags, we went back to Busan Station, which was the train station and surrounding area with lots of restaurants, shops, and bars, and walked around for a bit. That's when we noticed there were tons of american guys around. Tons. And then we saw all the signs hung up around saying "Welcome U.S. Navy!" and so yes, that weekend was shore leave for a couple of U.S. Navy ships! The whole weekend they were everywhere- shopping and buying things like crazy, in restaurants ordering one of everything off the menu (yes we saw this), and of course letting loose and drinking. But they did have a midnight curfew to be back on the boats so they started all of this early. Needless to say it made it for an interesting weekend and a lot of fun! So after grabbing some lunch we started walking around and exploring the city. We came across a very random British exhibit at one of the huge Korean department stores and just had to take some pictures:

 Now Sam is actually British but has never ridden on one of the red buses or had her picture taken with one of the Royal Guards! (She's from Wales) So her first time to do both was in South Korea of all places!

 I was pretending to be Godzilla:

Next we went to Jalgachi Fish Market, a huge and very famous market on the ocean where they bring all there fresh catches and other things to sell. It's both outside and inside, so here are a few things we saw inside (and remember, this is all alive and moving, except for the stingrays!):

It was pretty crazy. Everything I've never wanted to eat! I felt like I was in an aquarium instead of picking out something for dinner. But you can pick out whatever you want, and then there are restaurants upstairs that will cook it for you!

After we went through that and did some more exploring, we decided it was time to just relax and have a drink before we decided what was next. We went back to the Busan Station area and found a random little Korean bar that had no one in it but us. Seemed like a great place to have a beer and play some cards (which Charles sisters always seem to have on them) so I taught Sam and Cassy how to play Indian Poker, which they loved! Needless to say, instead of just having one drink then going back to our hostel to change and go to dinner and then out, we decided to stay and drink more beer and play Indian poker for a few hours!

I had brought my Forrest Gump sayings playing cards!

Sam:

Cassy:

 Haha and me:

Haha it was great. After that we went to a bar/dance club, which was of course filled with Navy boys. It was a fun night, met a few fellow Southerners (South Carolina and one guy was from Ft Worth!) had entertaining conversations and did some dancing.
Oh and Sam wore her first cowboy hat:

So that was Saturday, I think Sunday and Monday need their own entries so I'll have to write about what happened then a little later. For now I need to go to work! Stay tuned for Busan: Part 2!