Busan, South Korea-from the Worlds Largest Store to Africa

Yesterday was my first full day in Busan.

For another cool day, after breakfast at the hostel I took the metro to Shinegae, the world's largest department store, located in Busan. That's right, despite the sign on the outside, the world's largest department store isn't in the Big Apple and doesn't have a parade every Thanksgiving. I walked in right around opening at 10:30, and like every department store, it was full or workers behind every counter-except here they pretty much all bowed to me.

I looked at the guide to the store-which is 11 stories tall, and includes a ice skating rink (Which was closed when I tried to check it out). I walked around a little bit, and it looks pretty much like any other high-end department store. Actually, the world's largest store is more like a mall, and seems to have an H&M, Gap, and many other stores within the world's largest store-so it is hard to tell where the store ended and the mall began (and there is an adjoining mall-called the Centrum mall.)

I then walked over to Busan Cinema Center, right near Shingegae, which is a large hall with an outdoor plaza-I have found out that Busan is the film center of Korea. An African festival was going on, with a band playing African music, and booths from the various African countries going on. There was food being served as well. it was sort of odd to see South Koreans wearing African dress.

I had some African beef patties, and some cake for lunch. Additionally, I had French fries at a food truck named Belgium Travel, where they specialized in French fries. I met some high school girls from Chicago there, who we're on a one year exchange program. These girls had last name like Alvarez and Rodriguez. Being from Chicago, they we're probably of Mexican (or other Latin Country) descent. That would mean these girls from the US who descend from Mexico (or somewhere else) we're in South Korea attending an African festival at a Belgian food booth.

After the festival, i got back on the metro and on to the hop-on hop-off bus to check out other places in Busan. The hop-on hop-off saw some interesting and not so interesting sights-such as the first draw bridge in Korea. Supposedly, it opens every day for 10 minutes, and tourists go to see it. On the hop-on hop-off bus, there we're three mothers and 6 kids who made a l ot of noise.

The bus then went up a hill to a neighborhood called "The Santorini of Busan", which has houses on the hill-it didn't look much like it. I wanted to get off anyway-but couldn't, because by the time I got up to get off at the stop the bus continued going. I did get off at the next stop, hopefully to escape those kids-which didn't happen because they got off to. The stop was an observation deck high up on a hill overlooking the sea, with steps going down to the sea. The observation deck was actually a seawalk, which had a view through the floor where you can see what was below you. It was an impressive view. I walked down to the sea, and took pictures on the rocks.

I got back on the bus a while later. I took a picture of a stranger with his camera, and he gave me some food he was eating. Additionally, a little girl on the bus gave me some candy.

The bus kept going, up hills to the top-I got off at another observation desk, which was called Oryukdo, which was a large park. Here there are 5 or 6 islands out at sea, which vary according to the tide. i only counter 3 or 4 from the angle I was at. But it was a nice walk up the hill and back down, and through a park.

I returned to the bus. It went over to a beach, with cable cars, across the beach. And across large bridges.

It then got back into town-I got off and had some sushi (Busan supposedly has better sushi than Japan-not sure but it was good).