April 8 - Busan, South Korea

 We docked around 9:30 and our tour didn't gather until 1:00 pm, so we had a leisurely morning.  I was surprised by how big Busan is.  It's the second largest city in Korea (behind Seoul, of course) with around 3.5 million people.  Most of them live in high-rise apartments. These are some views from our ship.

The huge parking lot for the cruise terminal and two big apartment towers right behind.

This campsite was right next to our dock.  It doesn't seem like a very pleasant place to camp, but it's pretty popular.  There were electric hookups and a dog park right there.

Our tour was Cultural Performance and Busan City. Most of our regular group was on this tour, but only Jan and Tom were on our bus. We had to get an entry stamp into Korea and it is literally a stamp that they put on the outside of the passport, not inside.  It will eventually wear off, but maybe that's by design?  Anyway, that took a few minutes, but since we had gone right out to the bus as soon as we had our bus number rather than wait for the whole bus to be called, we didn't have to wait long.

At the cultural performance, there were 4 dances performed and a drummer performance.  It was all lovely with gorgeous costumes.  The dancers were so graceful and the 3 drummers were amazing - all in perfect synchronicity even with some very complicated moves.  There was an older gentleman and a younger man and woman.

As part of the dance, she would quickly pull up the blue overskirt to show the bright red underskirt and maybe even a bit of her white socks. 

This was amazing, albeit very loud.  I trust they wear ear protection or they'd be deaf within a few months.  I was tempted to cover my ears a few times.

 

One of the beautiful costumes from past years on display.

Then we were off to the fish market.  It was quite large and very busy.  There were different varieties of squid, eels, and even baby octopus for sale.  It was a bit smelly, but not overwhelmingly so.

Different types of crabs

The center contains the large eels.

These were fresh fish that had been cleaned and then propped open, I guess to show that they were cleaned.

We walked by this pet store where they had a few puppies in the window.  This fellow was really attacking his toys.

An interesting manhole cover.

I guess this is a cafe designed for singles to meet others.

Our last stop was at a park which had a large duty free store and some interesting statues.  There were lots of buses there and we saw our friends, of course.  I didn't get any photos of them, but the cherry trees here are also at their peak.  I feel so fortunate to be here for that.  We were afraid we would miss them.

The store had a great display screen with constantly changing scenes.

I caught Phil at the cultural performance

And he returned the favor by catching us as we returned to the ship

We got back to the ship too late for trivia, so we got dressed and went up to the Observation Lounge for a pre-dinner beverage where we ran into Steve and Leona.  Then we headed off with them to meet Jan/Tom at Chartreuse where we had reservations.  Chartreuse is the French themed restaurant, but it is different from any French food we've been familiar with.  

Around 40 crew members turned over today and we ran into a few that we knew from prior cruises including Brandon, the Food and Beverage Manager, and Anjay, a server.  And they rememberd us too!

We have been so lucky with the weather with only one rainy day in Japan.  Otherwise it's been cool to warm.  My allergies are acting up, which surprised me, until I learned that about 1/3 of Japanese suffer from allergies, especially to the cedar tree pollen.  We were told that most people are wearing masks to protect from pollen, not viruses.