We started Day 2 of Busan off at 4:30am, where we all woke up to watch sunrise at the temple and then collectively decided we should not be awake that early and fell back asleep.
We woke up later at 9am, and then finally left the hostel at around 10am to head to the Haeundae Beach. It was fun to put my feet in the clear water, and enjoy the view of the highrises over the sandy beach. I do not really like beaches beyond the initial appreciation, so I went to get cold noodles while everyone else sat on the beach and enjoyed the water.
Honestly, the cold noodles were really yummy at first bite but the more I ate, the more I disliked it. I liked the sweet and vinegary taste of the noodles, along with the dumplings, but the flavor got increasingly diluted by the ice melting and I don’t think it sat in my sleep-deprived stomach well.
Then, we headed to the Haeundae Sky Capsules, which were unfortunately sold out for the entire weekend. I was fine with this, as it was nice to walk along the path and we got to stop at an observatory along the way + it was really pretty to watch the sky capsules rolll past and you can’t see that from the inside.
After walking back, we headed to the Busan x The Sky outpost to watch the sunset, and it was really nice to see a collective overview of Busan rather than being in the thick of it. It was $16 though, which was not really worth it considering you could get a similar view from a mountain peak. But it had the world’s tallest starbucks, which we saw and promptly walked away from because it was super crowded.
After, we stayed in that area and split up to get food. I and someone else got street food (sushi and hotteok) while the others went to a sitdown resteraunt to get philly cheese steaks. I wasn’t that hungry after my huge lunch, but I wanted to try fish and it was really affordable for like 12 pieces of assorted sushi.
We ended the night by ubering up the Hwangnyeongsan Mountain, which provided a gorgeous view of the city lit up at night. It was too dark to really see the ocean in the background, but it was still super gorgeous and it felt like the buildings just kept going on forever. On our way down, we could not get our uber request to land and kept on calling into the void until finally walking down and catching a bus home. We ended up getting back around 11:30, which was later than expected considering we were going to try to rise for the sunrise at the temple.
Highlights:
- Haeundae Beach
- Busan x The Sky
- Haeundae Blueline Park
- Hwangnyeongsan Mountain
