Crescent-shaped Gwangalli Beach is one of the most popular hangouts in Busan, offering fine sand, good swimming, and an exorbitant number of cafés, restaurants and bars. We’re lucky enough to call it home for the next three months and have already spent a lot of time on the its entertaining promenade.
Gwangalli is known as “Café Town”; a well-deserved nickname. If you’re looking for a caffeine fix, there’s an endless supply of cafés to choose from. Angelinus Coffee even has two branches here. These cafés, very Western in style and selection, share the beach front with a large number of bars and clubs, including a few which are known as “foreigner bars”.
We’ve only been here for two Sunday mornings, and have already seen three foreigners (almost definitely Americans) completely passed out on Gwangalli Beach. One girl, still her in Saturday clubbing outfit, laying completely immobile, face-down on the sand at 1pm on Sunday afternoon. Sigh. We Americans aren’t exactly known for our drinking prowess, but that’s something else. It’s a good thing there’s not much crime in Busan.
At the northern end of Gwangalli is a live fish market and the world’s largest sashimi house. We’ll write about this in more detail later, but apparently what you do is choose your live fish from one of the vendors, then take it to one of the upstairs restaurants where it’s sliced into a sashimi plate. Yum! (I think).
As much fun as Gwangalli can be during the day, it’s especially lively at night when the promenade fills up with love-struck couples and groups of friends meeting up, for a night on the town. The atmosphere is festive, with lights of the bars and cafes matched across the water by the lights of the sparkling Diamond Bridge. Gwangan Bridge is Korea’s second-longest, measuring in at a jaw-dropping four miles, and the way it encircles the bay is quite beautiful.
We’re excited for the onset of June, when beach season truly gets underway. The swimming at Gwangalli is supposed to be fantastic, and there are a number of watersports, such as jet skiing, available from the nearby Busan Yachting Center. Should be a fun summer.
We're Jürgen and Mike, from Germany and the USA. Born wanderers, we love learning about new cultures and have decided to see the world... slowly. Always being tourists might get lame, but eternal newcomers? We can live with that. So, our plan is to move to an interesting new city, once every three months. About 91 days.
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