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| This picture reminded me of my mom:) |
I’m getting behind on my blog entries!! I went to a Cherry Blossom Festival early April to check out the famous cherry blossoms in full bloom. Everyone that’s been here long enough to see them has said that I need to check them out. Trees in blossom can be seen all over Busan, but Jinhae (a city about a 1.5 hour bus ride outside of Busan) is renowned for them. If there’s ever a place where you want to get blown away from the quantity and beauty of the blossoms, Jinhae is the place to go.
One of my girlfriends and I left around 930 in the morning and arrived just before noon. Our bus ride to the “country side” was quite nice on its own. I have country side in quotations because we followed a 6 lane high way the whole way there so we weren’t that far off the beaten path, that’s for sure. The sights of the mountains along the way were beautiful. The landscape was a different story. It might just be the time of year, but I have yet to see an actual green landscape here. It’s always been yellow and brown which isn't as easy on the eyes.
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| View from the top |
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| Some of the many stairs we climbed |
Upon arrival we hopped off the bus and debated where we should go first. On one side of the street was the obvious way to go – it was lined with street venders in what seemed to be a closed off street for the event. On the other side of the street was a tower of stairs that we hoped would lead us to a view of the city. We decided to do that first. It might after all give us a bearing on where we wanted to go. We had no idea we were about to take a step to signify every day of the year. After 365 steps we finally reached the top – well, what we thought was the top anyways. There was another tower, with about 9 more flights of stairs that we decided to climb. Hey - why not! It ended up being well worth it. The view of the city, mountains, and ocean all coming together was amazing.
After poking around a bit, we went back down the main area where we tickled around some more. There were tons of kiosks shops and places to eat. We ended up getting some kabobs from one of the vendors to fill our stomaches after our crusade of the steps. We had an idea on where we wanted to go next from looking things up on the internet beforehand, it was just a matter of finding it. There was one place in particular I wanted to see - it was a bridge with blossoms that bowed down in bunches on either side. There were quite a bit of foreigners there, so we had no trouble at all finding someone who knew where to go. Once we got to the famous bridge, we had to take a minute to gather our thoughts as it was just that beautiful. I assure you, the pictures I took couldn’t capture how amazing they really were. Granted, if the streets hadn’t been littered with venders and people it would have been nicer, but it’s Korea – that seems to be the norm here. We also stumbled across a park not far from the bridge, which was less crowded and more my stride. Here are some of the pictures I ended up taking.
Our trip ended with a 1.5 hour wait to catch a bus back to the city and a 4 hour drive. Traffic was bad, and I think we decided to leave at the same time everyone else did. We couldn’t really complain though because the line up behind us grew to about twice its original size when we got in it. All in all it was a beautifully scenic day!
