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!