Jinhae, or "Why you should always buy a return ticket"

A few weekends ago, there was a Cherry Blossom festival in Jinhae. Ben, J and I decided to wander down for a day trip. We booked tickets the night before, because I accidentally cancelled our tickets. I was printing the confirmation, accidentally clicked "Cancel" and there was no confirmation button saying "Do you want to cancel your ticket?" and then I couldn't re-buy them because the website only lets you buy one set of tickets a day, even if you cancel the original tickets... I should have known then that there might be some transportation trouble.
We left bright and early in the morning. We headed to the train station and took the 3 hour train to Jinhae. As per usual, I did not sleep very much the night before and then did not sleep at all on the train. 

We arrived in Jinhae safely. The first thing I saw was the picture to the left, so naturally, I took a picture with it.

We hopped on the bus that would take us to the festival. I knew the bus would take us immediately to the bus terminal, where we could buy our tickets back to Seoul.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic and we decided to just walk. It was about 70 degrees, which was the first time I'd actually felt warm in months.

We walked to the train station in Jinhae. We planned to buy bus tickets, because it was a bit cheaper, but we did not head back immediately to the bus station, which was a mistake.

We got distracted by all the cherry blossoms which were beautiful.

See, look! The blossoms were in full bloom!

We started wandering around the festival. We saw a sign for Korean sign language letters, which was cool.

Saw some eel racing.

And a panda, so naturally I closed my eyes.

Saw some jewelry

And cuttlefish.

And a pig

             They were selling some swords and awesome bows and arrows.

Clearly, they were very prepared for an emergency.

There's a guard giving a baby some water. Very adorable.

Couple hats.

A band performance and dancing performance.

Couple kids outfits.

More blossoms of course.

Creepy, split in half statue.

They served whale meat, in every single stand. Mildly horrifying.

Aka very horrifying.

We then went in search of the ocean, which we could hear at various times, but could not see. We wandered up this hill to see if we could see it. We could hear it more clearly, but still it was out of our sight.

We rested a bit here.

Here are a group of older men, Ajushis, playing games and talking, which was pretty fun to watch.

While in the bathroom, Ben held my camera. The following pictures resulted. There are other, more unflattering pictures, but these are some of them.

Around this time, we decided to head to the bus station to buy our tickets. By the time we arrived at the bus station, the tickets to Seoul were sold out. So we went to the train station to buy train tickets.

We arrived at the train station. The entire Korean train computer system was down. Aka, we could not buy tickets because there was no system to connect to. The internet website and everything was down...We asked the guy, "Well what should we do?" and he said "I don't know."

There were no trains or buses out of the town until 6AM the next morning...

Oops.

We decided to just enjoy the day and evening, since there was no sense worrying that we were trapped.

Here is a giant pot of jjigae.

And the whale meat...

Since we were trapped, we decided to climb the hill up to the view point, which was beautiful.

Then J got ahold of my camera, which resulted in these pictures.

I would just like to point out that the constant hair touching was due to the high winds up at the viewpoint.

Our lovely group picture.

The sunset

After we hiked up the 365 stairs to the viewpoint, we had approximately 9 more hours before we need to be on the bus, so we wandered around the festival at night.

Here is a cafe. It looked like a house. It was very old. One thing we noticed in Jinhae was that there were no chain coffee shops. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but in Seoul there are coffee shops upon coffee shops. Way more than in Seattle. In Gig Harbor, we have the corner with 4 Starbucks. Recently, they built a Starbucks next to another Starbucks in the same building. Yes, it is a different Starbucks and not an extension. It's directly next to at least 5 other coffee shops. The chains include Starbucks, Holly's, Seattle's Best, Dunkin Donughts, the Coffee Bean, Cafe Bene, Beansbins, Angel in Us, Tully's and others...It's amazing. But, in Jinhae, there were no chain coffee shops. Just cute coffee shops that were old or very nicely decorated.

We stopped at the above cafe (with the deer) because Ben needed a quick nap. Then, we continued walking at night.

7 hours to go...

This is Beondaegi, aka silk worm larvae. I have been very adventurous with my eating here, but this is something that I have not managed to try yet.

The post office

Here's some garbage...This is what happens because there are no garbage cans in Korea.

We stopped at a discount stand, which included this painting which was a Lion from one direction and a scantily clad woman from the other direction.

And this high quality Ehglish book.

These are sticks for disciplining your children...

We then hung out outside at a convenience store reading, since it was about 1AM and the festival closed.

Then, we got cold and wandered over to Mcdonalds and hung out until we needed to go to the bus station.

Next time, we will always buy a return ticket...We learned our lesson, that assuming that all festivals are like the Andong Mask Festival, where you can easily get a return ticket, is not quite the smartest thing to do.