While we were paying for our tickets for the observatory of the Busan Tower there was pricing for a combination ticket. Apparently there was a Musical Instrument museum attached to the Busan Tower!

Here's the Museum from the outside

The bottom level housed lots of old instruments and on the top level you could play some of them!





Horn Violin


Hurdy Gurdy- Europe




Dungchen- Nepal


Piccolo trombone?


Saung Gauk-Myanmar


Surbahar-India


The middle one is a Gayaguem from Korea


I thought the one below would make a great headboard!


A Sarad and a Sitar from India


Bo Gong- Vietnam


Now it was time to play!




What a fun museum! As we were walking back to the subway station Dan noticed these statues in the middle of the road. Notice anything missing on these boys? Gotta love how random Korea is...


Once we were back near our hotel we grabbed dinner, which was McDonald's for the boys and Bibimbap and Yaki Mondoo for us! Yum!

Shortly after dinner the boys crashed, and when I say boys I mean all of them! What a day!

After an exhausting travel day and difficulty finding and getting settled into the hotel, it was very tempting to abandon our original plans for the day. BUT we didn't travel all the way to Busan to appease Alex, since apparently his wish was to stay in the hotel all weekend. So first stop? Busan Tower!

You all know that Seoul Tower was a huge hit with the kids, so Busan Tower was a natural choice. We walked to the nearest subway station and took advantage of the Busan metro system. It was quite crowded so we were left standing, which Alex thought was the end of the world and proceeded to scream, squirm, hit and then (a first time ever) punch me. Despite lack of space we opened up the stroller and strapped him in. That's pretty much how he spent the whole trip.

It was a short walk from the subway station to the entrance of Yongdusan Park, where Busan Tower is. Thankfully they had escalators the led all the way up (like 6 flights!).

Here's a first look at Busan Tower.

And here's where we were reminded of how quickly our kids become celebrities. There are even fewer Americans in Busan so the kids were a hit everywhere, and i mean everywhere, we went!

Giant bell that I really wanted to ring

Men all over Busan were playing this game, and it must be fun because it has this whole group captivated!


Getting closer!


On the way up to the ticket booth there is an art museum and model ship museum. For 1,000 won each we decided to check out the ships! They were pretty neat.







I don't know if you remember, but atop the Seoul Tower there is an area that is popular for proposals and couples buy padlocks and keys, write their love messages and add them to the wall. It was funny to see that the Busan Tower had something similar, though not nearly as many.

And here are the views from up high. We're not sure why, but both Dan and I started feeling pretty woozy pretty quick so we didn't stay up there very long.

Jagalchi fish market









And on the way out we found this on one of the roofs!


So that's the first thing we did on Day 1. Check back later for our next stop!

I had to take a quick side-blog to say goodbye to someone who has made our Korean adventure that much brighter.

Have a safe trip and best of luck with what awaits you in the States and thereafter. Our time together has been awesome and we, especially the boys, will miss you a lot. Until we meet again! (maybe on cruise with lava cake?)

When Dan saw that he had a 4 day weekend for President's day he said, "We should go somewhere! How about Busan?" We decided pretty quickly that the trip was a go!

I am going to post the trip in several blogs b/c each day we did like 3-4 things, and because I probably won't have time to do each day of travel per post. But be sure to check back each time because we did some super fun/cool Korean things!

First, here is our destination.

Since our GPS gave up the ghost, we decided not to drive. Instead we took the KTX from Seoul Station to Busan Station. There were basically two options: $50 tickets for a 2 1/2 hour ride, or $25 tickets for a 5 1/2 hour ride (more stops). We opted to take the cheaper route on the way down since the train would be a novelty. It was a LONG ride, but the boys did pretty well. Alex even took a nap on Dan.











We arrived at 1:30pm in Busan, and now the adventure could begin, right? All we had to do was get to our hotel! We were quickly approached by some taxi drivers, one who was the 'greasiest' Korean I'd ever seen. Mullet, 3-piece shady looking suit, and his hair had been dyed, which means it was that coppery color. He wanted 30,000 won (about $30) to take us to our hotel! When we asked why, he said it was because of our big bags. Um, we managed to make it to our train station in a taxi without being charged extra for our bags, nice try. Then another guy chipped in and said our hotel was 10 minutes away, as if that would convince us 30,000 won was a good price. We walked away and attempted to find another taxi. It took awhile to find one that knew where our hotel was.

At this point Alex was having meltdown after meltdown, screaming, throwing himself on the floor and into the street, refusing to hold my hand despite the dozens of taxis surrounding us. And of course any time he did hit the ground every Korean would gasp, like how dare I let my child do that? FINALLY we found a taxi that quoted us 10,000 won and we were on our way. Alex still screamed and kicked all the way to the hotel, even managing to roll down windows and open the door one time. In Seoul they have seat belts, but in Busan they didn't. It was a little scary! (BTW the taxi only ended up costing 7500 won, but since he quoted us 10 we gave it to him)

But finally we were at the hotel. Here we could regroup and get ready for our afternoon plans, right? Nope, the hotel workers about died when they saw us with children. Mind you, there was nowhere on the booking website that asked for the age of our children, or said that if you have children you have to stay in a certain size room. I'm sure the language barrier didn't help our cause, but they weren't going to let us stay there until he walked us up to the room and we said, "This is OK" with thumbs up. He kinda shrugged his shoulders and let us pay. Korea is full of hotels with small rooms. We can't be the first to have our children sleep on the floor!

NOW, we could finally start our vacation!