It's just the way my mind works when I go to a new place that around the halfway mark of my time there (which is more or less right now as I write this sitting at Skoll Taproom) that I start mentally place where this city will rank on my favorite cities list. I say "where it will" vs. "will it rank" because as someone who had a Top-25 the first time I wrote that list and now am up to Top-64, I'll just keep extending it. Gyeongju will probavly find a home in the mid to high 40s or so. Busan will be higher, but at this point I do think I prefer Seoul. The differences are interesting however.
Busan is a beautiful place, and their key sights - at least the ones that I went to today - are stunning. They're also just far. The way the city is built as I noted yesterday, has the city careening in and out of hills. The stuff closer to the water and central port and around its main beaches are modern, beautiful, impressive, but wholly modern. The main sites are either temples built into the cliffs and hills far away from the city center, or hikes and natural beauty - of which Busan has a bunch. It's an endlessly impressive city in that sense - and luckily Uber works well giving some level of comfort for the series of 10-25 minute drives to get from place to place.
The sites today ranged from two of the famous temples in Busan (or around Busan), and two of the key natural beauty aspects. I'll start with teh latter - as mentioned Busan's coast alternates between rocky cliffs and beautiful beaches, and i experienced both. The first was the Daritdol Observatory, which is a U-shaped walkway built out over the coast, with a glass-bottom floor that makes it look quite terrifyingly close to you are hovering over water. You get a sense of Busan's cragginess at this point - though because this is a bit out of the central city to the East combined with teh contours of the city, you don't get to see
The other bit of natural beauty is Busan's beaches. It is very much near winter - if anything as I later learned it is unseasonably cold right now - but the beaches exist year round. At night, Gwangali Beach is alit with all colors of neon signage from teh rows of bars, restaurants, shops on its edge. During the day, the metallic blue of skyscrapers take hold, with teh bridge out in teh bay, and hard, white sand running underneath. Walking from one end to the other is about 30 minutes, a perfect enough amount of time to soak everything in.
The other part of Busan's tourism offering is its temples that take full advantage of the uniquely rocky and hilly ttopography. The first temple I went to was the Haedong Yunggusa Temple, which is built basically into a cliff-face at teh far Eastern end of the city. It is almost too beautiful how the various buildings, pagodas, statues, buddhas, etc are placed on, over and in the rock. My favorite part, of it was a series of buddha and animal statues placed alongside a (probably man-made) waterfall with the water ending up falling into the Ocean below. Haedon Yonggusa is a great spot.
As is the Samgwangsa Temple, this one built up in the hills, about a 20-minute winding drive north of Central Busan. This is more of a classic Temple design, what with the 4-5 buildings, bell tower, large pagoda with statues, etc., but taken to 10. It might have been the most beautiful in terms of the clarity of the colors and statue-work, and the setting didn't hurt as well. To give some of the other temples some credit, the Samgwangsa Temple is quite a bit newer, including featuring one Temple - the highest up - that broke ground in 2019 and was finished in 2022. It is gorgeous, with a sharpness of color that was striking (but of course explained by it being so new).
In between all this I had lunch at Uenhae Galchi, a cuttlefish spot of some repute but perfectly homely in its style. Before getting the main dish, you get about 15 edifferent banchan bowls (finally learned the name of these little things). Again, I'm overwhelemed always by this and generally a good 75% are quite good, but I do have to wonder how much is wasted. Admittedly, from what I can tell I got the same amount of everything as tables of two next to me. After munching down some of these, it came to the main - first three pieces of perfectly, lightly grilled cuttlefish which just broke apart on touch in the best way. As a surprsie second, was a bowl of seafood miso soup, and when I say seafood I mean small shrimps, scallops and tofu. The place isn;t cheap, at least relative to what you would expect given the minimalist decor, but you get a whole hell of a lot to eat.
The other tourist part of the day was strolling around in Seomyeon, primarily in the blocks around the Jeompo Cafe Street - a 2x2 block area with umpteen cafes, eateries and shops. Sadly, the shops are mainly kitschy stuff (think more adult versions of Hello Kitty), and a unbelievable amount of photo booth stores - like an ungodly amount, including many that have the interior decor of a super upscale shop. My souvenir hunt continues on, but was able to score some more incredible cappuccinos.
After a quick stop at the hotel to freshen up, I headed for "Thanksgiving Dinner" at Mori,, a Kaiseki-style restaurant run by a Korean who trained in Japan. It showed in how perfect everythign was. The cleanliness, the sharpness, the little details. It was all so incredible. It was eleven of us seated on a table aroudn the kitchen, with the main chef and one assistant just humming through the nine courses in a perfectly timed 1:58. It was true Kaiseki style, with the main being a unagi fried rice that was to die for and other traditional kaiseki dishes of sliced sashimi of various types as one course, a fried course of fried fish, roe and pumpkin, one meat dish, etc. It was an amazing meal - had zero connection to anything of Thanksgiving other than of course having a perfectly little piece of fried pumpkin.
Post dinner was a run traversing through various places in Busan, including uncovering a new neighborhood. First was a place just named Beer Store - run by an Australian, it has about ten taps, and dozen of bottle options from around Korea. It was quite busy with people having a great time. Same was true of Dengue Fever, which is a tropical themed bar/lounge in an unknown to me neighborhood near one of Busan's Universities. If I ever make another trip to Busan (knowing me, will be an "when" and not "if") I'll spend more time in this buzzing area. Dengue Fever was excellent, though a bit empty (to be fair, I got there at 12:45 and they close at 2am on Thursdays). It was cool enough, with great bartenders/owners, that i'm probably coming back.
The final stop was more impromptu. I meant to go to Fuzzy Navel, of which there is a Haeundae location about five minutes from my hotel. That indeed was there but pretty empty - I'm thinking this cold is more of a deterrent than I expected, as it was the Aussie owner at Beer Shop that told me this is very much colder than what Busan normally is in late November. However, next door is a place called Overdo, which seems to mostly cater to tourists, but was fantastic. It's small, but in their main floor they have a bar and a guy who mixes together various youtube videos along with some other youtuve backing track, on the fly. "Mixing" is probably too complimentary, as its more just moving the volume slider up and down, but it created a great vibe and a great way to end the night. I'm planning to end tomorrow at Melt, one of Busan's main EDM clubs, which is also conveniently fairly close to my hotel, but if that is a bust or too fancy, I'll head back to Overdo easily.
