Welcome to this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives? Every month a group of seven bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on specific prompts. It’s been so interesting over the years to see the different ways each of us interpret the topics.

June’s theme is VACATION!!! Everyone loves vacation, so I’m excited to see what my blogger friends share!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own

Now I’ve stood in the water on both sides of the Pacific Ocean

While some may feel I’m currently LIVING “on vacation” here in Seoul, really I’m just living regular life…just in a different place. So I was really looking forward to my vacation in June. My daughter Katie came to Korea from the US, and we spent a few days together here in Seoul, then we took a trip down south to Busan.

Busan is the second largest city (after Seoul) in South Korea, but being a coastal city, it has a very different vibe than Seoul. We stayed in a nice airbnb right across from the beach, on a high floor with a lovely balcony, so the view was really nice.

Being there made me feel like back in the day when my parents and I (and sometimes my sister and her family, sometimes my friends) would go to Ocean City, Maryland for the last week of summer. The week would start out hot and crowded, with the beaches, restaurants, and boardwalk just jam-packed…and then the day after Labor Day would be like a ghost town and it felt like we had the whole town to ourselves. I think we went every year from the time I was around 6-7, until I turned 18 and left for college. That was my family’s annual vacation.

It’s sort of an interesting story how we first found out about Ocean City. We were living in Newark, Delaware and, if I remember correctly, one of my mother’s friends had to “get out of town” to hide from her husband (I don’t know all those details, but everything felt very electric and a little panicky that day). So my mother packed the three of us in the old sky blue Plymouth Belvedere, and we headed south. I don’t know if she even knew where were going beforehand. Or if she just DROVE. Either options sounds about as unlike my mother as I can imagine. A last-minute adventure heading into the unknown?? Nope.

Anyway, we wound up for the weekend in a little, dark motel on the beach…and really had a nice time. We ate out, walked on the baordwalk, and enjoyed the pool and ocean. When we returned home after our escapade my mother shared with my father what a nice place this was, and the following summer we returned as a family…and then just never stopped.

I never knew what became of the friend. I hope she was okay.

I think three times during my marriage we went there – once with friends and twice with Katie when she was probably 2 and 4. I THINK that’s right. I don’t really *remember* remember it, but I have pictures as proof, ha ha.

ANYWAY. Back to the Busan Vacation. And let me just pause here to say this about vacations…

WHEN YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL

Ha. In my defense, the decision for Katie to come here to Korea came pretty last minute – maybe two weeks out…and the following week was my finals week so I was busy studying and had high, unsettling anxiety. So while I did a lot of (over)planning for our time in Seoul, I had only a rough bucket list of things we wanted to do in Seoul.

So here’s my little list of things to do before, during, and after a vacation.

  1. Have a conversation with your vacation partner and try to agree that you will leave any problems/conflicts at home. Agree to think before you speak and Really Try to only be kind and accomodating to your partner. Yes, these rules should apply to every day life, but…we’re all human and get caught up and sometimes forget. So try to agree that vacation is a Safe Space where you can both enjoy yourselves.

We took the high-speed KTX train from Seoul to Busan. I was looking forward to seeing Korean scenery outside of Seoul but it was not really that exciting. Smaller towns, rivers, and farms. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  1. 2. When purchasing multiple transportation tickets, make sure the seats are together. Do not assume (you know what happens when we assume) you will get seats 12A and 12B. Nope. You MAY get 23C and 11A. Just saying.
  2. Always check beforehand with your host/hotel reception if you can drop your luggage off before check-in time. Most places will try to accomodate you and it makes your wait much easier if you’re not lugging luggage around with you.
  3. Something *I* think is a good idea (some may disagree) is to take turns deciding where/what to eat…rather  than trying to appease everyone at each meal. Person A picks where/what to eat and Person B has the attitude of “everything suits me just fine.” Next time Person B chooses…and Person A goes with the flow. Obviously try to not be TOO outlandish (read #1 again), but this way everyone gets to have exactly what they want half the time.

There were several specific activities we both wanted to do in Busan:

a. Haedong Yonggungsa Temple: a Buddhist temple in Gijang-gun, Busan, South Korea. The temple complex is quite extensive and beautifully set into a seaside cliff. It honors Haesu Gwaneum Daebul, the Sea Goddess Buddha of Mercy. PS – there are 108 steps to get to the temple from the entrance.

b. Busan Sky Capsule. This is an elevated tram car that goes along the coast and has great views of Busan from above, as well as the sea.

c. Songdo Beach Sky Park: Another elevated, ski-lift type thing that takes you over another part of the city’s coastline.

d. Gwangali Beach Drone Show: This is the beach our airbnb was on, and the host promised a great view of the drone show from the balcony. During the “drone show season” (March-September), there are 2 15-minute shows every Saturday night.

e. 15-step Spa Hair Treatment for a relaxing Saturday afternoon after all our running around.

f. Sunset Cruise

There are MANY other things to do in Busan…if you’re able, it warrants several trips to see and do All The Things, but we had less than 48 hours so had to pick and choose.

Let’s just review…

When You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail

  1. 4. Be sure to look up, WELL AHEAD OF TIME, what events and activities you need advance reservations for. We learned this the hard way.

This is as close as I could get.

I love lanterns. paper, concrete, you name it. I love it.

Temple Guardians

This one’s for Iris 🙂

This is one of Katie’s pictures from inside the temple.

Remember the lamp I had that looked like this??

Stairs…

We always had Fat Buddha’s in my home growing up.

Stairs…

And more stairs.

Offerings to Buddha.

I don’t know who she is.

I did not go down those stairs.

So, the first evening we went to Haedong Yonggungsa Temple. I knew I would be unable to go all the way to the temple itself  because of the 108 steps (down…and then 108 back up) 🙁 but I told Katie to go ahead without me and I would wait at the entrance.

For the first few minutes of waiting, I took pictures of some statues at the entrance area…but it was late in the day and that area, being very shaded, was getting quite dark. So, bored, I went down one little flight of steps. The 108 are not in one long straight run, there are multiple sets of stairs set on different directions and parts of the cliff. And they were quite low steps…and had a sturdy handrail. I ended up going down 5 or 6 sets of stairs…Very Slowly…and was able to take some pictures along the way…and to see the temple itself from a distance. It took me so long to go down and then back up, that by the time I got back to the entrance, it was only a few minutes before Katie arrived. She did enjoy seeing it and taking pictures (she has an excellent eye for photography), and it was especially nice because Buddha’s Birthday had just passed, so streets and temples were all still decorated with colorful lanterns.

We did not eat here.

When we got home we struggled to decide on where to eat. Katie’s not big on pork, and we’d just had samgyeopsal (pork belly) the night before when he had dinner with Jun and Hyunggun, so she didn’t want to go to a Korean restaurant again so soon. Fortunately, because the Gwangali Beach area (where we were staying) is very touristy, there were a lot of non-Korean options, mainly Italian and pizza. We ended up at a bar that served food…and has an extensive “Western” menu. I had buffalo wings and she had…wait for it…wait for it…pork sliders (#didn’tyoujustsay…).

During dinner we looked at our options for the next day. Turns out the Sky Capsule is so popular that it must be booked WEEKS in advance (#WYFTPYPTF), so that was out 🙁

We were exhausted after that, due to late night the prior evening and early morning to get to the train, so we went home and went to bed. I set out to get a reservation for the SkyLine the next day and was relieved to see that, unlike the Sky Capsule, you could book the day before. It took me awhile to find the site to get tickets…but finally, finally…on the registration page…everything is slow-going here because of the language…I got to the place where I needed to put in my credit card…but was So Tired and said I’ll Get Up in Just a Minute and get my credit card….

…and woke up at 5am…still on the registration page…but now it WAS The Next Day…and I could no longer purchase tickets for that day…and the next morning we were leaving quite early. So, once again…WYFTPYPTF.

Sigh.

Well, we still had the relaxing spa afternoon to look forward to after a little sleeping-late sleep in, which we both needed.

  1. 5. Make sure any events/activities/businesses are still actually in business before you actually go there (#foreshadowing).

At least the walk had some pretty sights along the way.

It was a hot day. My knee was a little sore from the week of SO much walking and all the stairs the night before. But we set off on foot because one of us is a young, fit person and who thinks of distance inot in the same way as the other. So we walked and walked…and looked and looked…only to discover that the spa was either never in that spot, or was now out of business with something else in its place. I called and got a recoding saying the number was not in operation…a Korean woman waiting for the bus saw us searching and tried to help, but she couldn’t find it either. So, in defeat, we walked (and walked) back home.

There were plenty of other things we could have done that afternoon but we were both exhausted, I was hot…and we just didn’t have it in us to start fresh with a new destination. Plus, at that point we didn’t have THAT much time before we needed to leave for the sunset cruise. So we just rested in the ac and on the balcony for a few hours.

This was our “before” picture. Before we got our hairs pampered and did. There is no after cuz…

The evening plan was this: sunset cruise from 6:30-7:30, then hurry back to the room for the drone show at 8…then dinner.

I was very surprised to see THIS in the marina. Glen Head is a town on Long Island! Did they BOAT here…from NY??

The cruise was nice…except, being a cloudy day, there was really no sunset to speak of. The sun did break through the clouds JUST before it went behind the mountain, so…there was that. And everyone jumped up to take pictures in the two minutes of shining sun.

Have I mentioned how photo-centric Korea is? Everything is a photo-opp…and people expect to wait politely and patiently for their turn to take a picture in the best spot. No annoying crowding so that every picture is filled with dozens of strangers. It’s quite nice.

  1. 6. Don’t forget to take pictures! It’s easy to get distracted and forget…or think, my hair is too messy on the boat, let’s wait til we dock and take one together then…but then everyone is hurrying to get off the boat so the next people can get on, and you’re already slower than everyone anyway, so…another photo moment lost.

After the cruise, the area was jam-packed with people and traffic, and it took us a LONG time to get an Uber…and a long time for the taxi to get us home. We walked into the room and onto the balcony, literally as the drones, post-show, docked in their little water docking station to glide over to their resting place. No worries, we said, there’s another show at 10. We’ll hurry to dinner and get back in time for the second show.

Somewhere along the way I got tangalu, which is something I’ve wanted to try since I got to Korea last summer! It’s basically fruit in a sugar shell (like candied apple but more delicate). It was SO GOOD.

We went to another nearby Western restaurant, because it was in walking distance. And we were back to our room just before 10, got our snacks and drinks and got comfortable on the balcony and waited for the show to start.

I’d wanted to eat here. It was right behind our airbnb and looked pretty. Korean food.

10:00, no drones, 10:05, 10:10…uhm…10:15…no drones! We rechecked the schedule as we both thought it clearly stated 2 shows every Saturday night between March and September. And we found ANOTHER site that went into more detail…and said that there are two shows every Saturday EXCEPT for the night we were there. There was only the 8:00 show. So…no drone show on the balcony for us.

  1. 7. Check and double-check event schedules before making plans.

I think we were both just feeling disheartened at this point…and knowing we needed to get up very early to make our rides out of Busan (she was flying to Tokyo directly from Busan), we just packed up and went to sleep…parting ways tiredly the next morning.

Sunrise the morning we left.

So…Busan was, for the most part, a comedy of errors. But not really that funny. We did have some nice moments sitting together on the balcony, walking a bit on the beach, and just spending some time together. And it was nice to be out of my usual area and routine. But as vacations go….

Night view from our balcony. We missed the drone show but the bridge had a light show all evening.

And when I got back to my room in Seoul, alone…was the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve thought…I Want to Go Home.

But that’s a whole other story for another time.

I hope you’ll remember some of my tips for the next time you go on vacation…so you have the experience you’ve hoped for.

Please make a visit to my lovely friends’ blogs as well and spend a little vacation time with them!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own