Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival (Part II)

 Hi everyone! The Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival was last weekend! It was incredible, amazing, spectacular, and beautiful. No wonder this festival is "The Festival" to go to for cherry blossoms. The picture on the left is at the Dongdaegu train station at about...7:15am on

Saturday. Glad we had time to get coffee! 
The best part about arriving to Jinhae in the morning was being able to take a ton of pictures without huge crowds of people. By the afternoon--the entire walkway in the picture would have been filled with people.

In addition to taking many pictures of the cherry blossoms, we took plenty of pictures of the festival. The balloon cart was the first carnival/festival looking-cart we saw of the day. When I took the picture, there were two really cute boys carrying Power Ranger balloons walking in front of us. I'm really bummed they aren't in the picture! One section of the festival had games like the fair at home! The balloon popping game, a shooting game, basketball game, a throwing game, 

and more! Occasionally, we saw people walking around carrying the stuffed animals they won. We didn't play any games. Whatever we won we would have had to carry the rest of the day. 
We saw a horse-drawn carriage on our way to the main circle

of the festival covered with flowers. It looked just liked Cinderella's carriage! I thought of you mom instantly! Fortunately, I was able to take a good photo before another car got in the way. 
We knew we were close to the coast and a naval base, and when we discovered just how close it was, we decided to walk there! The picture of us in the cherry blossom tree was taken on our way to the base. 
It was pretty cool to see the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I mean, I guess all the ocean would look to same. But to think

about it was kinda cool. The base had their own festival going on. One of the ships (not the John McCain ship) was open for tours. The line was really long so we decided not to wait. We wanted to get back to the cherry blossom festival to climb Jinhae tower for more picture taking! 

I want to mention that Jinhae isn't only covered with cherry blossom trees. There were many types of flowers in bloom! The best picture I took is the one on the left. Grammy--it looked just like the pink flowers you have in your backyard.
At the top of Jinhae tower there was a fitness area! As if climbing the 365 steps wasn't enough! Anyway, there were crazy big hula hoops and of course, we had to try them! The white one is heavier than the ones I'm used to and slightly larger as well. We thought we were doing pretty well until Fluke took out the

massive black one! In his post, you can see my attempt to hula hoop with it. Since we figured the scale of the hula hoop would be difficult in a picture, we took one of me standing on my tippy-toes next to a ring of them. It was really fun and definitely an ab workout!

In the afternoon, we (Fluke, our 2 friends, and me) decided to sit in the water walkway area between the rows of cherry blossom trees and relax for a bit. Part of this relaxing/chill time was spent on smartphones because it really is pretty awesome to have a smartphone (not that I would know since I have a basic flip phone...but Fluke, Daryle and Jackie had theirs out and I have to say, I was a little jealous! 

The arch with the lights was one of a few in the main circle. They looked white in the afternoon, but at night, they looked incredible. You can also see the crowd of people walking in this tiny portion of the festival. I took the picture when we were walking to the Jinhae train station trying to get a taxi. All I'm going to write about that is how it was really stressful, our taxi driver was a bit speedy, and we made the train back to Daegu with only a few minutes to spare!
Our day at the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival was one of my favorite days since I've been here. The views and area were beautiful,  we had the opportunity to take hundreds of pictures, we spent time with friends, we ate yummy street food (food post up next!), and we explored a new area of South Korea. 
Thanks for reading everyone!


Love and miss you all,
Jenn