Dec 2024 – Apr 2025

We stopped in Busan on the way to Jeju because people told us we should. It’s Korea’s second biggest city, right on the southern coast. Ocean, cliffs, seafood, the whole deal.

First order of business: lunch.

Naengmyeon. Cold buckwheat noodles with banchan. Ordered from a tablet because Korea has figured out that talking to waiters is optional.

Pokin was tired and had work to catch up on, so she stayed back at the hotel after lunch. Which left Nicholas and me.

I told him to take me to see the ocean. He needs to keep working that knee anyway. The big hike is day after tomorrow and I’ll be honest, it’s looking dicey. But he’s pulling through.

Busan’s coastline is something else. We started walking along the shore and just kept going, up paths we probably weren’t meant to take, along cliffs we probably weren’t meant to climb.

The beach was nearly empty. Off-season. Just us and the skyscrapers across the water.

They built this skywalk that extends right out over the water. Glass floor, waves underneath. I am on record as being dramatically anti-water, so I want it noted that I walked out there anyway. Bravery.

The coastal trail kept going. Rocky cliffs dropping straight into turquoise water. Staircases carved into the hillside. The kind of path where you’re either going straight up or straight down, and every landing has a view that makes you forget you’re out of breath.

Next day, all three of us went back out. Same coast, but farther.

Morning mist rolling through the pines on the hillside. Quiet. The kind of view you don’t need to say anything about.

We kept walking until we hit the Songdo Cable Car area, where things took a turn.

There were dinosaurs. Full-sized dinosaur statues. Just there. At the cable car park. No explanation. No museum. Just a T-Rex with blood on its mouth standing next to a ticket booth like it works there. Teeth bared. Eyes dead. I respect the commitment. This is how you welcome guests.

Korea does this thing where they put random sculptures and statues in public spaces and nobody questions it. Giant blood-mouthed predators at a coastal gondola? Sure. Why not. I’m into it.

We took the cable car back.

The Songdo Cable Car runs right over the ocean, connecting the coastal park back to the city. Gondolas gliding over turquoise water with the whole Busan skyline stretched out ahead of you.

More dinosaurs greeted us at the Busan terminal. Because of course they did.

Busan surprised me. I expected a city with a beach. I got a city built into cliffs, wrapped around an ocean, full of trails and cable cars and dinosaurs that nobody can explain.

Tomorrow: Jeju. The big one. The hike.

Nicholas’s knee has been warned.

Korea has been through a lot of wars. Seoul was nearly flattened during the Korean War. Most of the country’s wooden palaces and temples have been lost to fire, neglect, or conflict over the centuries. Gyeongju is the exception. Not because everything survived, but because the things that are hardest to destroy did: the stone monuments, the earthworks, the ancient city layout, the burial mounds. The old capital of the Silla dynasty kept its bones when everywhere else lost theirs.

So naturally, we took the train down to see it.

We got our K-Pass, hopped on the KTX, and arrived in Gyeongju. The hotel was… interesting. Korean-style ondol room with floor-level futons, warm wood walls, and a bathroom that was genuinely larger than the bedroom. I’m talking a full stone soaking tub, mosaic tiles, the works. The bedroom was basically a very fancy closet. Priorities.

We got in too late for any real dinner, so we did what you do in Korea when everything’s closed: convenience store.

Korean convenience stores are something else. An entire wall of Buldak fire noodles in flavors like Cheese, Carbo, and Rosé. ₩1,800 each.

The hotel had a strict no-food-in-the-room policy. We bought the ramen anyway, smuggled the bowls upstairs, and ate them in silence like criminals. Did our best to leave no trace. The steam probably gave us away.

Next morning, we went for a walk. Yes, Nicholas is still walking on his knee. The man is committed to pretending he’s fine.

We found a café doing fika. If you don’t know what fika is, it’s the Swedish tradition of sitting down for coffee and pastries, and taking your time about it. Nicholas’s mom is obsessed with it. We did fika in Sweden and now we can’t escape it. It follows us.

Fueled up, we went to see the thing Gyeongju is famous for: the burial mounds.

These are Silla dynasty royal tombs. Giant grass-covered domes, right in the middle of the city, just sitting there between apartment buildings and cafés. Each one has an ancient king or queen buried underneath. Sacred ground. You can walk right up to them, but you can’t walk on them. Strictly forbidden, protected national heritage.

It’s wild. In most countries, something like this would have a fence and a gift shop and a $30 entrance fee. In Gyeongju, it’s just part of the scenery. People jog past them.

Even the Starbucks is in a traditional hanok building with curved tile roofs. The city has strict building codes to preserve the historic character. No modern eyesores. Just a Frappuccino served under 600-year-old architecture. As it should be.

Cheomseongdae. The oldest surviving astronomical observatory in East Asia, built during the Silla dynasty in the 7th century. It’s a stone tower about 30 feet tall and it’s been standing there for 1,300 years. People were studying the stars from this thing before most of Europe had figured out plumbing.

We specifically sought this one out. My bud and I are space bears. We’ve watched Starship catch its own booster. We’ve stared at the Milky Way from a dozen countries. The idea that someone built a stone tower in the 7th century just to look up and try to understand what was out there? That’s our kind of people.

Wolji Pond was the royal pleasure garden. Stone-lined banks, pine trees, pavilions reflected in turquoise water. The Silla kings would throw parties here. I respect a dynasty that prioritizes a good garden.

The temple corridors have these painted wooden beams called dancheong. Red, green, blue, gold, all in intricate geometric patterns. Every color has meaning. Every pattern follows rules that are centuries old. Someone painted each one of these by hand.

Woljeonggyo Bridge. This one’s a reconstruction, but it’s built to the original Silla-era specifications. Two-story pavilions on each end, stone piers in the river. It’s the kind of bridge that makes you realize modern bridges are boring.

We wandered through an old compound that looked straight out of Rurouni Kenshin. Stone walls, wooden gates, a courtyard so quiet you could hear yourself breathe.

As the sun went down, we found what turned out to be the best Korean BBQ of the entire trip.

Not the sanitized tourist version with gas burners. This place used real burning coals. The meat was incredible. After a full day of walking on a busted knee, Nicholas deserved this. I’ll give him that.

Then came hwangnam-ppang for dessert.

Little bread buns filled with sweet red bean paste. Warm, soft, not too sweet. You buy a bag from a street vendor and eat them while walking home past 1,500-year-old tombs under the streetlights.

That’s Gyeongju. A city where ancient history is just the backdrop to daily life. Where a king’s tomb is something you walk past on the way home from dinner.

Nicholas’s knee made it through. Barely.

Day two in Seoul. Nicholas is still limping. The knee is “fine.” He needs it to be fine because there’s a big hike planned at the end of this trip, and if he can’t bend his leg by then, that hike isn’t happening.

Also, Korean elections were happening.

We walked out of the hotel and immediately found ourselves in the middle of some kind of political rally situation. Barricades everywhere. Police vehicles. Campaign displays on the sidewalks with robots draped in American flags. The vibe was intense and very familiar in a way that was hard to place at first, and then very easy to place. Nicholas said it felt like watching a rally back home, just in Korean.

I can’t comment. I’m a bear. They don’t let me vote.

A lot of streets were barricaded off because of protests, which meant our walking route kept getting rerouted. More walking for peg leg. Great.

But walking in Seoul does have its perks.

Gwanghwamun. The main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace. Built in 1395, burned down, rebuilt, burned down again, rebuilt again. Seoul’s whole deal, honestly. Everything here has been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice. Resilient city.

Visitors were dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing, which apparently gets you free entry to the palace. Smart move by the tourism board. Pokin considered renting one. Nicholas considered the state of his knee and opted out.

The palace grounds are beautiful. Painted eaves, dark tile roofs, courtyards that stretch on forever. I could get used to this. Someone build me one.

Now. Let me tell you about the Labubu situation.

Pop Mart is this toy company that makes designer collectible figures. The hot item at the time was Labubu, this little gremlin-looking thing that comes in blind boxes. You don’t know which one you’re getting. It’s a loot box. A physical, $15, stand-in-line-for-an-hour loot box.

A friend’s wife wanted one. So naturally, the entire trip became a Labubu reconnaissance mission.

Every day, part of our Seoul itinerary became: find Pop Mart, check stock, no Labubus, move on.

We went to this Pop Mart. Out of stock. We went to another one. Out of stock. We went to a third. Out of stock.

They were just never in stock. Anywhere. In the entire city of Seoul. Every single day.

Eventually Pokin had a revelation. Pop Mart is originally from Hong Kong. Pokin is from Hong Kong. She called her cousins and asked them to just get one there. Which they did.

Spoiler: we never got a single Labubu in Korea.

In between the Labubu hunt, we actually saw some beautiful things.

Queen’s Bakery in the Anguk neighborhood had a life-sized teddy bear sitting outside in an apron. Finally, a café that understands customer service.

The pastries inside were absurd. Strawberry croissants piled with cream. Chocolate muffins with gold leaf. Canelés. Grand Marnier on the shelf behind the counter. This is what a bakery should be.

We wandered through Bukchon and found a capsule machine shop sorted by MBTI personality types. Korea is obsessed with MBTI. People ask your type the way Americans ask your sign. Nicholas is INTJ, which according to the internet means “strategic mastermind.” According to me, it means “overthinks everything and hates small talk.” He didn’t disagree.

We ended up at Jogyesa Temple, Seoul’s main Buddhist temple. Hundreds of lotus lanterns strung overhead in every color, radiating out like a rainbow ceiling. They do this for Buddha’s Birthday, but the setup was already in full display.

Every lantern has a little tag with a name and a wish written in Korean. Hundreds of them clustered around the stone pagoda. It was quiet in there. Peaceful. A nice break from the election noise and the Pop Mart lines.

End of day two. Nicholas’s knee survived. No Labubus were acquired. Several pastries were consumed.

Seoul, we’re just getting started.

We’re in Korea.

Pokin had just wrapped up her forum in Seoul, and Nicholas flew in to meet her. With fresh stitches in his knee. From a bunny slope. You may recall.

Our base was The PLAZA Seoul, which sounds fancy because it is. From there, the plan was simple: walk up to Namsan Tower, take in the views, explore the city.

Walk. With the guy who just had his knee reassembled by a Utah emergency room two weeks ago.

Up the trail we went. Nicholas hobbling like a man with a peg leg, refusing to acknowledge that any of this was a problem. The trail up Namsan is pretty. Brick paths, bare trees, spring just starting to show up. But it’s also uphill, which is not ideal when one of your legs is held together by medical thread.

The view from up there, though. I’ll give Seoul that. The whole city just spreads out in every direction with mountains behind it. You can see why people climb up here.

Made it to the top. N Seoul Tower. Big tower. I’ve seen towers. This one’s got a good location, I’ll say that.

Now. Here’s where the day got interesting.

A friend of ours had heard about this pizza place, Spacca Napoli, supposedly the best pizza in Seoul. Pokin had the bright idea that we should walk there from the tower. More walking. For the man with the peg leg.

We thought it’d be a quick jaunt.

It wasn’t.

We wound through these steep hillside neighborhoods, down narrow streets, past tiny shops. Seoul is a city that was apparently designed by someone who had never heard of level ground. Every block is either straight up or straight down. Nicholas’s knee had opinions about all of it.

We got to Spacca Napoli at 2:58.

It was closed until dinner service.

So we had to kill two hours. More walking. We popped into some Pop Mart stores to look for Labubus. No luck. Nicholas’s knee was filing a formal complaint.

We got back to the pizza place at 4:30. Line out the door. Forty-minute wait.

Our friend was thrilled. I felt about the same.

One thing worth mentioning about Seoul: Google Maps doesn’t work here. Not properly. South Korea restricts mapping data because they’re technically still at war with North Korea, and the border is right there. So you have to download Naver, the Korean navigation app, to actually figure out where you’re going. Google will show you streets but it won’t give you directions. We learned this the hard way. Several times.

Eventually we got pizza.

It was good. Proper Neapolitan. Puffy charred crust, fresh mozzarella, basil, the works.

Was it worth walking what felt like the entire city of Seoul on a stitched-up knee to eat at a pizza place that was closed, then waiting in line for forty minutes?

I’ll let Nicholas’s knee answer that one.

We went to Brian Head to ski.

Pokin grew up in Canada. You’d think skiing would be in her blood. It is not. She never learned. So they decided to take a green run. You know, the ones designed for children and people who have recently discovered that snow exists.

So we went to the bunny slope. For Pokin.

Guess who wiped out.

Hint: not Pokin.

My bud, who I’m told is a “great skier” and was “definitely not hot-dogging,” somehow launched a ski off his foot with such precision that it sliced his knee open like a samurai katana. On the bunny slope. The one we were on for Pokin.

He didn’t even feel it. Just kept going until he noticed the blood on the lift.

I have questions. Several of them. But I’ll save those for later.

Ski patrol showed up with the toboggan. Three of them. For a bunny slope injury. I’m sure that wasn’t embarrassing at all.

They got his boot off in the patrol room and had a look. His sister Julia stood there with the expression of someone who’d just watched her brother get taken out by the tutorial level.

The verdict: stitches. A lot of them.

Now here’s the thing about Brian Head. It’s a ski resort in the middle of nowhere, Utah. The nearest ER is about forty minutes down the mountain. And we drove there in the Cybertruck.

Nobody else knew how to drive the Cybertruck.

Not Julia. Not Pokin. Just Nicholas. The guy who couldn’t bend his leg.

So the truck drove itself down the mountain. Forty minutes of autonomous driving through Utah canyon roads while my bud sat there with a sliced-open knee trying very hard not to move. I sat in the bag trying very hard not to think about it. Technology!

They stitched him up at Intermountain Health. He survived. The whiteboard behind him says his nurse’s name was “Sunshine.” Even the hospital was mocking him.

The bunny slope remains undefeated.

Now. Pokin’s response to all of this was… interesting.

She went to the store and bought him a strawberry-scented Easter Peep. As “emotional support.”

An emotional support Peep. For a ski injury. On a bunny slope.

I want to be clear: we already have a Peep. One Peep is already too many Peeps. That yellow menace has been stowing away on trips since 2015 and contributes nothing except chaos and the word “Peep.”

And Pokin’s solution to Nicholas’s suffering was to bring home another one.

I didn’t know whether to smack him or feel sorry for him. Pokin made the decision for me by handing him a scented stuffed animal in an emergency room.

Bunny slope.

Ulgh.

After eleven hours of canal transit, Cartagena was our last real port day. Old stone fortresses, colonial courtyards, streets painted every color, and 32 degrees in the shade. We hired a private driver for the day.

First stop: Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. A 400-year-old Spanish fortress built on a hill to defend against pirates. Tunnels running through it in every direction, walls thick enough to stop cannonballs.

Next: Convento de la Popa, the highest point in the city. A monastery from 1607 sitting on top of a 150-meter hill. The courtyard inside is full of bougainvillea and colonial arches, and the terrace looks out over the entire coastline.

Then we drove down into the Old City. Narrow streets, massive wooden doors with iron studs, walls in turquoise and yellow and coral. Every corner looked like a postcard someone had over-saturated, except it actually looks like that.

We stopped at a park on the way back. And there, among the trees, were macaws. Bright red, blue, yellow. Giant beaks. Massive wingspan. Colorful and winged.

Like me.

I liked them. They had good energy. Wings used for looking incredible. We understood each other.

That evening was New Year’s Eve. Which meant another formal night. Nicholas broke out the tuxedo. I wore my suit again. We looked sharp.

We counted down at midnight somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Another year. Another set of adventures logged.

A few sea days later, we pulled into Fort Lauderdale. Sun, palm trees, flat ground that doesn’t move. Strange sensation after two weeks.

I got a custom suit, a canal crossing, and a friend who was a macaw. Not a bad way to end the year.

Now if someone could explain to Nicholas that cruises count as vacations and not floating offices, we’d really be getting somewhere.

I woke up in the dark.

Not because anyone asked me to. Not because there was an emergency. Because today was the day. The Panama Canal. The full crossing. Pacific to Atlantic. And I was not about to let some family of early risers steal my viewing spot on deck.

It was 5 AM. The ship was still. Nobody else was out here yet. Just me, the warm tropical air, and the faint glow of the canal infrastructure somewhere ahead.

Eventually the sun came up, the coffee appeared, and everyone else finally dragged themselves out.

Then it appeared. The Bridge of the Americas. The Pacific entrance to the canal. Once you pass under that bridge, you’re committed.

The scale of this thing hits differently in person. The canal is 82 kilometers long. Ships have been transiting it since 1914. Over a million vessels have made this crossing. It took 75,000 workers and ten years to carve through the Continental Divide. The French tried first and failed. The Americans finished it by building the world’s largest dam, flooding an entire valley to create Gatun Lake, and engineering a lock system that lifts ships 26 meters above sea level and then drops them back down on the other side.

We’re doing that today. On a cruise ship. With a buffet.

The approach to the first locks was slow and deliberate. You could see the system from a distance. Massive concrete chambers, steel gates, railroad tracks running along the sides.

Then we were in. The lock gates up close are enormous. Each leaf weighs 700 tons. They swing open and closed on hinges like a door, no wheels, no tracks. Just hinges and gravity. They’ve been doing this for 110 years.

The locomotives running along the sides are called “mules.” They don’t pull the ship. They keep it centered in the chamber using steel cables so the hull doesn’t scrape the walls. Each one weighs 50 tons and costs about $2.4 million.

Then: Gatun Lake. The artificial lake at the center of the canal, 26 meters above sea level. Created by damming the Chagres River. When it was finished in 1913, it was the largest man-made lake in the world.

The crossing from Pacific to Atlantic takes about 11 hours total. You rise through the Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locks on the Pacific side, cross Gatun Lake, then descend through the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side.

We made it. Pacific to Atlantic. 82 kilometers. Three lock sets. One full day from the pre-dawn darkness to late afternoon sunlight on the Caribbean side.

Nicholas was right to want to do this. It’s one of those things where seeing it on a screen gives you zero sense of the actual scale. The weight of those gates. The precision of the mules. The sheer audacity of flooding an entire valley and building a staircase for ocean ships across a continent.

I sat on that deck for eleven hours and didn’t once wish I was somewhere else.

Costa Rica wasn’t on the original itinerary as anything special. Just another port day. But it turned out Nicholas’s family has old friends originally from here, and they offered to pick us up and show us around.

Cristina and her family met us at the port and drove us around for the day. It’s a different pace down here. Green everywhere, tropical rivers, actual wildlife just… sitting there.

The bridge was specifically for watching crocodiles from above. Not behind glass. Not in a zoo. Just a river full of prehistoric murder lizards doing their thing directly below us.

The day ended at Cristina’s home. A real home-cooked meal, good conversation, the whole group together in one place. The kind of stop that makes a cruise feel less like a floating resort and more like actual travel.

Back on the ship, the food situation had reached a new level. Pokin had been ordering every dessert on the menu every single night. Not sampling. Ordering. Full portions. Multiple.

And then there were the lumpia. One of the Filipino waiters Nicholas and Pokin befriended had been sneaking us homemade spring rolls from the crew kitchen. Not on the menu. Not available to other guests. Just for us.

The next morning I woke up on the balcony and there it was. The skyline getting closer. Panama.

Tomorrow we cross.

Christmas at sea. Two weeks of me claiming the best spot on the balcony. I’m in.

The Coral Princess, departing Fort Lauderdale, heading south through Mexico, Central America, and then the main event: the full Panama Canal crossing.

Nicholas picked this one specifically for the canal. He’s convinced it might close someday, or at least become inaccessible to cruise ships, and he wanted to do the full transit while he still could. Pokin was on board (literally) because the engineering of the thing fascinates her. Naturally, I was coming too.

The first few days were sea days, which suited us fine. Nicholas colonized the balcony with his laptop immediately. I supervised.

We docked somewhere in Mexico and Pokin found a spot to relax with me while Nicholas went exploring. Some things never change.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, a gingerbread house competition had been organized. The family got very into it.

I did not participate. My paws aren’t built for frosting work. But I did judge silently from afar. Solid effort. Could use more chocolate.

Then came Christmas, which on a cruise means one thing: formal night.

Nicholas made me a suit. A proper grey pinstriped blazer. Custom fitted for a 186-gram bear. I looked incredible.

Not a bad start. Mexico was fine. The balcony office was productive. The suit was a hit.

But the real reason we’re here hasn’t happened yet. Next stop: Costa Rica, and then south toward the canal.

For Christmas this year, Uncle Charlie sent us a gift.

Not just any gift. A set of custom ceramic coasters, each one featuring a photo from this very blog. My face. My adventures. My legacy. Ready to protect our coffee table from condensation rings.

Uncle Charlie has always understood what matters. When we visited him in Boston, he took us around Oak Square like we were royalty. He bought Nicholas a brick with his name on it (I’m still waiting for mine). He sends us gifts every year, and every year they’re good. But this one? This one is permanent.

Every time someone sets a drink down in this house, they see me. As it should be.

These are the main coasters at Bear Falls Resort now, by the way. Not because the old ones broke. Because these are better.

Thank you, Uncle Charlie. You always did treat me right.