Busan, South Korea

We spent a nice day in Busan (Pusan), South Korea. Hazy, but sunny skies and temps in low 60s. We were happily on our own for the day. Had a relaxed morning and took a shuttle at 10:00 into downtown. There were a few sights Stan had marked on his GPS, so we used that to get around, as is our norm.

The Jagaichi fish market is well known and quite large - right in the center of downtown. Stan always enjoys taking pictures of these markets. Most tanks were teeming with live sea life and those with legs were continually trying to escape. An octopus that had gotten mostly out of its tank was casually lifted back into its tank by the shop owner.

After going up to the Sky Terrace viewpoint on the top floor, we wandered back through to the Gukje market area - very similar to many everyday merchandise street markets we have seen before - where you can buy anything and everything you might need. It's not so focused on tourist stuff which is fine with us, but I found a couple of things (and finally used my like bit of Yen that I hadn't spent in Japan). Yesterday was a Saturday, so there was a lot of local shopping going on - both in the street markets and also in more mainstream stores.

We headed toward the Yongdusan park escalators, but found a very large, old decorated building blocking our way. After finding our way around the block, we found it was a Buddhist temple, seeming to be related to lotus lanterns. We couldn't read the sign, but there was a poster of the Lotus Lantern Festival and there were lots of lanterns hanging inside. There were a number of Buddhas inside, so we removed our shoes and went inside so see things more closely.

We then wandered our way back around to find the escalators (up only) to the park, where Stan found magnolias and a few cherry blossoms. Then it was time to work our way down and down and down the many steps back to our shuttle. Over all we had a nice day wandering, once again, on our own.