Korean Market Days

It's Monday afternoon and we're completing our ports in South Korea.  The flight to Seoul was uneventful and very long - about 13 hours.

That gave us lots of time to watch movies and we both watched 2 Oscar contenders.  We both thought that The Holdovers was excellent.  We also both watched Oppenheimer and neither of us made it through the entire 3 hours.  It wasn't for the lack of time that I gave up on it, I just found it too long and too difficult to follow.  I know that I'm in the minority and that the film won many Oscars.  I guess it's the crooked tree in me.

Now back to the trip.  We spent Friday night in Hotel The Sea Star in Incheon.  It was obviously a hotel that catered more to the Korean crowd so we had a bit of difficulty communicating with the staff.  The hotel is located near an amusement park with other amusements nearby.  But it was so cold and we were so tired that we did not explore the area other than from our window.  In the morning, I went for a very short walk along the waterfront area.  The sun was shining but it was 35 degrees - way too cold for my California blood.  I walked long enough to get a few photos including the monument to MacArthur's landing in Incheon.

Saturday morning we boarded Riviera and quickly received a real surprise.  At lunch, Linda heard someone call her name and it was her second cousin Ruby.  We had no idea that she would be on board.

Sunday, our port of call was Jeju, South Korea. 

We had originally booked an excursion through Oceania but, in deference to Linda's hip, we cancelled that.  We opted to take the ship's shuttle bus to the city with the intent of visiting the Dongmun Market.  The bus dropped us near a temple where there was an anti-government  demonstration going on outside.

We walked from the drop off to the market where we found lots of fish and the mandarin chocolate confections that I heard about.  We did our share of tastings the confections, not the fish!

On the way back to the bus stop, we passed an interesting sculpture and some Dol hareubang, traditional Jeju statues representing grandfathers.  

We ended up walking for about an hour and Linda did great considering.

Monday our port of call was Busan, South Korea.  Sailing in I was reminded me of the Port of Long Beach with all of the cranes and containers.

Our plan for the day was to take the hop on, hop off bus to tour the city which is the second largest in Korea.  In the terminal they told us that the hop on hop off does not operate on Mondays and Tuesdays.  New plan needed!  So we took the ship's shuttle into the city and walked along the seafood street and fish market.

The most unusual seafood we saw for sale was the sea pineapple. It is a type of sea squirt unique to this area.  Maybe when we return in 2 weeks, I'll have to find some place to taste it.

After the fish market, we walked through the street market.

We again had walked for about an hour by the time we returned to the bus stop.  We really love walking around markets wherever we travel so, while we didn't do the things we originally planned, we enjoyed our outings into Jeju and Busan.  While I know that Linda is frustrated by not being able to go the distances that we used to, there is something to be said for taking life in the slow lane.  We are certainly making the best of it and what can be wrong with life on Oceania.

Tomorrow, we begin our journey through many Japanese ports.

Peace and blessings,

Linda and Larry