In early April, I went to the 52nd annual Jinhae Gunhangje Festival (진해군항제) also known as the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival. I don’t mind crowds and always have a good time at festivals in Korea, but surprisingly, I’ve never been to this festival before. It was great!

The city boasts that they have the most cherry blossom trees in the world. There are apparently 360,000 trees blossoming at once, if you’re curious.

Friends were discouraging me from going to the festival. Before I went to Jinhae, people were telling me that it would be too crowded (“everyone will be in your pictures” and “it’ll be so difficult to get there and back”), that the flowers had blossomed too early, and that it would rain. I still went, and I’m happy I did.

There were a ton of people there, but again, I don’t mind crowds. Probably less people there than usual, because it did rain for a short period of time. We just sought refuge from the rain in a tent, drinking makgeolli. Not a big deal.

The view of the trees around the stream was beautiful, and I also really enjoyed the view of the city from Jinhae Tower. The city was very easy to walk. I’ve been told foreigners can rent city bikes there for 1,000₩ with your ARC.

We opted to stand on the one hour bus ride between Jinhae and Busan both ways, so we only had to wait 15 minutes to leave. Bus rides between Jinhae and Busan (Sasang Bus Terminal) are totally reasonable at 5,100₩. We opted to stand, but we actually sat on the steps of the bus (not too uncomfortable) and then on our way back, we sat on the floor of the back of bus (much more uncomfortable). But, meh, we had a good time.