First of all, let me wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2014! Second, let me pray for Golbin! to get bigger, both in terms of readers and storytellers :)

This and the next few of my stories are going to be about my week-long travel to Busan, South Korea. I went there with my wife and 1 year old daughter in the week of Christmas (23-28 Dec), because of different reasons

• 23rd was my wife's birthday
• I had holidays in my office on 24 and 25, so only 3 days of leaves need be taken
• Busan, I was told, is much warmer (without any snow), but a lot windy, during this time of the year, than Suwon (where I reside)

Anyways, so we decided to go to Busan for a week long vacation. We had to prepare for a long time, because this was the 1st time that we were going out for such a long time taking our baby (who is just 1 year old) with us. The preparation revolved mostly around baby clothes, for the windy weather, and home-made baby food. The only thing we had actually reserved before going to Busan were the hotel (we stayed at the Riviera hotel, which was very close to Haeundae beach) and the to and fro train tickets. We did not want to book/reserve other things mostly because there was a huge amount of uncertainty regarding how my daughter would react to a new place. Fortunately, not only did she not give us much trouble, but she also enjoyed the place a lot

Considering that we had our baby with us, we had set low expectations of travel in a day. If we could visit 1-2 places in 1 day, that would be good enough for us. That is also 1 reason for the week long tour, even though some of my (bachelor / newly-married) friends had said that just 1-2 days were enough to visit Busan.

We traveled from Suwon to Busan in the KTX train, which runs at a max speed of about 280 kmph. The idea of traveling so fast itself was enough reason for me to visit Busan. The other major attraction being the Busan aquarium, about which I had read and heard a few good things, and had especially liked their website. I was also looking forward to the journey itself because I wanted to replicate the photography techniques that this guy (here) had used; my try was disastrous :(

We started from Suwon station on 23rd morning 10.50am, and reached Busan at around 1.40pm and to our hotel (bus #1003) in Haeundae at about 2.30pm. Then we rested a bit, had some lunch, and visited Haeundae beach in the evening. Although my wife loved the beautiful beach, we had to return soon to the warm and cozy hotel room because it was a bit too windy and chilly for my daughter to handle

Finally, we ate dinner at Namaste India; the food was very tasty. Since it was my wife's birthday, we had some ice-cream and called it a day!