No Call Number: Happy Anniversary to Us

Our anniversary once again falls on labor day weekend, so we decided to take a day trip. Busan is my favorite city in Korea and it happens to have a much-lauded aquarium, so we decided to head back there. I feel like our anniversary actually started on Friday, since I wanted a night off from cooking so we went to a new Japanese restaurant by Camp Walker. It was fantastic! We had great sushi, our own private dining room, and the whole thing set us back 20,000 Won (about 17 dollars). The chef came out to shake our hands after we finished. We didn't understand what he was trying to say to us, but he gave Bobby a card so it was probably something along the lines of, “please tell your American friends about our good food.” And we will!

The next day, we headed to lovely Busan. We went via KTX, which takes a little over an hour. I have had a love-hate relationship with trains over the years (I hate Amtrak), but I love the KTX. It's really fast and always on time.

The aquarium is right on Haeundae Beach, but underground. It has some really neat stuff that we haven't seen before, like unhatched shark eggs and a shark tank with a variety of toothy sharks. There was also an extensive jellyfish collection. Overall, we decided it was probably the second coolest aquarium we've been to, after Atlanta. Not that it wasn't trying. This aquarium, like Atlanta, had a tunnel through the shark tank as well as an additional two story tank with massive rays.

The aquarium took about 2.5 hours, so when we came out we were looking for something else to do. We took a walk on the beach, which has transformed into full summer mode, with lifeguard stands, rentable floaties, and rows and rows of identical beach umbrellas. Sadly, neither of us had swimsuits. Summer comes a little late here, I think, as it didn't start getting really hot until July, and temperatures remain in the mid 90's. Haeundae Beach is still an enclave for westerners, with western style beach bar-and-grills and tons of foreigners wandering around. We got ice cream and no one pushed us to share it. (This happened in Daegu. We each got an ice cream and the server brought us ANOTHER ice cream with two spoons as “service”. Gee, thanks.)

We saw some tour boats coming out of a dock at the end of the beach. We love boats, so we bought a couple of tickets. It turns out the boat was going to this neat rocky island with a lighthouse on it. There were quite a few fishermen on the rock, though I didn't see any boat docks so I'm not sure how they got there. The tour guide explained everything, but in Korean so we had to make up our own stories.

We had dinner at Gecko's again, which is still a great restaurant, not so much for the food but for the patio overlooking the water. I got to see Haeundae after sunset, and it didn't disappoint. The whole beach lights up like Vegas. I still love Busan, and it was a great anniversary.