Friday, April 13

Today we drove literally to the other end of Korea - a 4 1/2 hour drive to Changwon (near Busan in the southeast corner of the country) for the annual cherry blossom festival.

It's a bit hard to describe just how beautiful the cherry blossoms were.  The entire town is planted with cherry trees...they are all blossoming with pinkish-white flowers.  Not only is much of the town white with the blossoms, but it is surrounded by hills with a ring of cherry trees midway up the hills.  It was just gorgeous.

We spent an hour in one scenic location along some railroad tracks, the a half hour along a stream in the middle of town.

Next stop was Changwon's Marine Park.  This exhibit center held rwo museums and a mothballed navy ship that could be toured.  We spent another hour or so there, then began the long trip back to Hongseon, where we had dinner.

The festival was well worth the long journey, and the 8-9 hours on the bus (with food, drink, K-pop videos and a movie) also provided a sort of rest day for our teams.