Busan Sand Festival

We had an amazing time in Busan as the weather was in the upper 70s and the beach was not swarmed with people. This is rare because Hyundai beach is known as one of the most crowded beaches in the entire world. It is the famous picture that shows a swarm of umbrellas overlapping each other that virtually hides any bit of sand that the beach has. From some satellite photos of the beach, all you can see is umbrellas that go from one side of the landscape to the other. However, we got to enjoy the beach fully as it was relatively peaceful and not packed. 

It was amazing that the beach was not over packed considering it was the annual sand festival. The sand festival consisted of professional sand artists from all over the world that would come a week early to prepare some kind of sculpture in the sand. This year, some artist broke the world record for the most detailed sculpture ever (or something like that). The sculpture was a Korean temple that was placed on a mountainside that had steps going up from all four sides. 

One of the last things we did in Busan was go to the aquarium.  It's the largest aquarium in South Korea and from what we've been told, the best; even better than the one at the Yeosu Expo supposedly. It was a pretty cool aquarium but we probably went at the worst time possible, during sand festival, because it was jam-packed full of people. Either way though we still enjoyed it and our favorite thing was walking through the glass tunnel where you can see sharks and manta rays swimming above you.

The train ride from Daegu to Busan is only an hour and thirty minutes. However, taking the subway system from the train station to the beach takes another 45 minutes, which seems to drag on. Alexa and I have quite the collection of subway cards now as we have had to get them to ride the subways for Seoul, Busan, and our own Daegu. We will soon have a subway card for Tokyo which I am sure will be three times as expensive since that seems to be the trend with everything there.

Alexa and I stayed in a hostel that was just a few streets away from the beach. Like most hostels, it was cheap; however the accommodations were excellent. The hostel had a complementary breakfast in the morning, nice sitting area with a big screen television, and plenty of restroom space that was separated for men and women. The hostel room had eight bunk beds which we shared with our 12 friends that went to Busan with us. It was only our second hostel experience but so far the hostels in Korea are far better than I envisioned a hostel being like.