Songjeong Beach, the Blue Line park and Mochi Ice Cream!

It is March 6th, 16 degrees Celsius and sunny, and Cam and I took advantage of our Monday off to explore a new area. From our neighbourhood, we took the subway and a bus to a beach we had never been to, which is known to have better waves for surfing and less people. It's possible that it was especially quiet because it's a Monday BUT for the first time, I think there were more birds than people on the beach that we were on.

We enjoyed getting our feet wet in the water and then sat blissfully in the sun, reading our books and sipping an iced Americano (Cam) and a grapefruit tea (Sarah - side note: I really love grapefruit tea here and need this trend to come to Canada). Then we had some corn dogs, which seem pretty popular in Korea. I had one covered in crispy potato and Cam had one covered in spicy crispy ramen.

Then we ventured on our planned walk for the day - all the way to Haeundae along a trail that doesn't exist on Naver maps or KakaoMaps but we noticed it on AllTrails. We were super excited to find out that the trail was a well maintained boardwalk that has ocean views all along it. It's right next to the Blue Line train, which are these cute capsule train pods that go just faster than walking pace.

For those of you coming to Busan, the capsule train - which is higher up and maybe you get the whole thing to yourself, costs 33000 won for two people (and it doesn't go all the way from beach to beach). The other train option, which is more like a classic train except that all the seats face the view, costs 11000 won for two people. The two train options are parallel to each other but of course the capsule one looks way cuter. The walk ended up being 5 km from Songjeon beach to Haeundae beach and took us just over an hour with all our photo stops. I could see it being nice to take the train one way though, especially when it's hot since the whole walkway is under direct sunlight.

The walkway was sooo nice. It's basically all flat with a couple of platforms to get better views of the ocean or the city in the distance. And a few places where you could go down the stairs to rocky beaches that reminded us of home. The whole thing is South facing so you get sun all day.

Near Haeundae beach, we went to Horangi Gelatteok (gelato + teok = gelato + rice cake so basically it's mochi ice cream). They had 4 or 5 flavours of gelato to choose from. We opted for cherry and pistachio. They take the preshaped scoops and wrap it in a very thin rice cake layer and serve it to you on a mini bamboo platter. OMG it was so delicious. I could eat that pistachio mochi ice cream everyday. We were very lucky to get to go on a weekday because on the weekends the line up is sooo long. Definitely recommend.