Aqua Park. Image courtesy Panthers Penrith

Everyone pitches Penrith as the gateway to the Blue Mountains, but a stay at the Panthers Entertianment Precinct with kids means it’s also the gateway to big adventures.

Taking a teen for a weekend away requires a completely different holiday strategy. Scenic lookouts are suddenly “just rocks”, historic villages are apparently something people endured before Wi-Fi and suggesting a leisurely bushwalk makes the younger of my teens look at me like I’ve just announced the family is joining a cult.

So when I told her she could bring a friend for a weekend in Penrith, I purposely skipped the whole gateway-to-the-Blue-Mountains, scenic-Nepean-River pitch and led with the important stuff… skydiving, wakeboarding and zombies.

Our base was Pullman Sydney Penrith, right in the middle of The Panthers Entertainment Precinct, under an hour from the Sydney CBD. My plan was simple enough.  Park the car, keep the teenagers entertained and see how long it took before somebody announced they were bored. As it turned out, that announcement never came. Which was when I started to suspect Panthers might actually be a cult. Not in a sinister, hand-over-your-worldly-possessions kind of way. More in the hang about for 48 hours, and you’ll find yourself emotionally invested in the place sense. And given the devotion of some Panthers supporters, I suspect they would consider that a perfectly reasonable description of membership.

Panthers Entertainment Precinct

Panthers Precinct.

Panthers World of Entertainment is one of the largest licensed clubs in the country, and over the years the Western Sydney institution has grown into a genuine entertainment precinct rather than just a club with a bistro. These days it’s home to Aqua Golf, an indoor skydiving centre, a full cable wake park with its own kids’ club, an amusement arcade, more than a dozen restaurants and bars and Penrith’s first five-star hotel, which sits right in the middle of it all. For families, that density is the whole point. You’re not driving between activities, you’re not researching where to eat each night, you’re just walking from one thing to the next.

Aqua Golf at Panthers Penrith

Aqua Golf © Aleney de Winter

We kicked things off at Aqua Golf, where you hit balls from the edge of a lake towards floating targets. It’s golf stripped of most of the things that can make golf feel like work, like walking, and there’s no need for a handicap, fancy outfit or any actual golfing ability. You just grab a club, a bucket of balls, pick a target and start swinging. The girls immediately turned it into a competition because apparently even a casual hit at a floating target requires a winner. I was not that winner. Though I didn’t expect to also be beaten by the four-year-old in the next lane.

Aqua Golf worked well for a first activity because it was easy-going enough to settle everyone into the weekend without requiring a whole afternoon. We had a laugh, tried to hit the targets and moved on when we’d had enough, although the girls were having such a good time taking the piss out of each other’s golf swings that the moving on bit wasn’t particularly urgent.

Most importantly, they were doing something together. No phones, no complaints about being bored and no requests to go back to the hotel. In fact, I was feeling so optimistic about this whole teenage weekend experiment I shot them into orbit.

Indoor skydiving at iFLY Downunder

iFly Downunder © Aleney de Winter

Well, not literally. But they were sent skywards. iFLY Downunder puts you inside a giant vertical wind tunnel and lets you fly without a plane or parachute, just a column of air standing between you and the laws of gravity.

There was a briefing, followed by helmets, goggles and flight suits. The girls looked kind of crazy in matching death row orange, particularly once the goggles had squashed their faces into something vaguely Muppet adjacent. The second they stepped into the tunnel, though, none of that mattered. Their instructor worked with them one at a time, helping them find their balance before gently taking them higher. There were nerves at first, of course, but they got the hang of things within minutes, and I could see the exact moment when the nerves gave way to huge grins as they realised they were actually flying.

By the time they came back down to earth, everyone was hungry.

Where to eat at Panthers Penrith

Marcel Bar & Bistro. Image courtesy of Panthers Penrith

We headed to Tori Cafe & Bar at Pullman for lunch, where a wagyu burger did the job of restoring enough energy for the next round of fun. Travelling with teenagers has taught me that food isn’t really a break from the itinerary. It is the infrastructure holding the itinerary together.

The good thing about Panthers is that food is never far away, and there is a ridiculous amount of it. You can go from burgers and seafood to steaks, hot pot, noodles and pizza without ever having to move the car, which is particularly useful when everyone is hungry at a different time and nobody can agree on what they want.

We had dinner at Marcel Bar & Bistro at The Pullman the first night, working our way through five fabulous courses, from crispy prawns with XO aioli and creamy burrata to sweet potato ravioli and a dessert that disappeared rather quickly. The food was excellent, and it was nice to sit somewhere that felt properly grown-up without the girls feeling as though they’d been subjected to a formal dinner.

Dinner at Marcels at Pullman Sydney Pentrith © Aleney de Winter

The following night we tried Alexander’s at Panthers, which turned out to be one of the surprises of the weekend. It’s a lively tapas and cocktail bar with live music, and our singer was so good that even the teenagers were properly listening instead of disappearing into their phones. We ordered a stack of tapas-style plates and proceeded to demolish them while the music carried on around us. It was the kind of place where dinner felt like part of the night rather than something you had to sit through before getting on with it.

There are plenty of other places to eat around the Panthers precinct too, from Kelly’s Bar + Kitchen and CJ’s Crab Shack & Grill to Tang Hot Pot, Five Guys, Italian Street Kitchen, Zen Noodle Bar and Brisket Boys. You could easily stay for a few days and eat somewhere different every night. And then there’s Harry’s Café de Wheels just outside the entrance, ready for the inevitable late-night pie and chips emergency. Because we all have those, right?

Cables Wake Park at Panthers

Cables © Aleney de Winter

Ready for more adventure, the girls took on Cables Wake Park, which caters to everyone from total beginners to experienced riders training on the bigger of its two lakes. Neither girl had wakeboarded before, but their instructor was patient and encouraging, having Marlo up and riding on her first attempt, cue 30 minutes of thoroughly unearned confidence that lasts right up until they move over to the bigger lake and she goes down face first. Three times. So she downgraded to kneeboarding, fell off that too, then gave bellyboarding a crack. By then falling had basically become the sport. But it turned out faceplanting is her vibe because she was keen to do it all over again.

Which means we’ll be back, especially in summer when the weather warms up and Cables adds its Aqua Park to the mix. The enormous floating obstacle course is packed with inflatable slides, climbing walls, jumping pillows and various things seemingly designed purely to be bounced on, scrambled over or launched off. Pretty much heaven for a teenager who considers falling into water a perfectly good way to spend an afternoon.

Five-star comfort at Pullman Sydney Penrith

© Pullman Sydney Penrith

We’re staying at Pullman Sydney Penrith, the region’s first international five-star hotel, tucked right into the Panthers precinct, with the club itself only a few minutes’ walk away. The building is curved and glass-heavy, designed to echo the nearby Nepean River, and inside it feels polished without being precious. Our room is properly spacious, with big, ridiculously comfortable beds that feel particularly good after a day spent being dragged around on boards. And the staff… well, they’re all absolute sweethearts!

The hotel has two dining spots, Marcel Bar & Bistro and Tori Café & Bar, plus a seriously well-equipped gym and a cedar sauna for anyone who has somehow still got energy left. There’s also 24-hour room service, which feels like a very sensible five-star amenity when you’ve spent the day getting wet, muddy or airborne.

There’s something reassuring about arriving back at a five-star hotel looking like you’ve been through a washing machine and nobody batting an eyelid. Two soggy, lake-scented teenagers wander through the lobby and the staff barely blink. Breakfast at Marcel is excellent too, with plenty of choice and enough substantial food to fuel another day of questionable decisions.

And then there’s the location. We could spend the day in the water, wander back to the hotel, shower, eat brilliantly and be in bed, without having to fish for the car keys once. For a family weekend, that feels pretty close to perfect.

Getting their FREAK on at Panthers

We finish the weekend with FREAK, because apparently the appropriate response to a weekend of wakeboarding, skydiving and generally throwing ourselves around is to get chased by zombies. FREAK is an immersive VR venue tucked inside the iFLY building, with free-roam games, VR escape rooms, laser tag and arcade-style experiences, all with 4D effects that make it considerably easier to forget you’re standing in a room in Penrith. The girls disappear into the virtual world and emerged comparing zombie kill counts, convinced they were the queens of zombie annihilation.

Then we made the mistake of going into Timezone. Or, more accurately, they told me they’d just have a quick look. There were driving games, shoot-em-ups, old-school arcade favourites and enough flashing lights and machines dispensing tickets to keep two teenagers occupied for considerably longer than I planned. They got competitive, obviously, collecting tickets and comparing scores while I stood there wondering how a quick look had somehow turned into an hour.

This was probably the right way to end the weekend, though. By that point we’ve done the big-ticket adventures, eaten extremely well and spent most of the weekend trying stuff none of us had done before. The last few hours were simply theirs. No itinerary, no rushing off to the next activity. Just zombies, arcade games and two BFFs having fun together.

Panthers provides a perfect weekend escape

© Aleney de Winter

The case I keep making to other parents when they ask how the weekend went is that Panthers solves the problem most family holidays run into… too much time spent getting somewhere, not enough time spent doing anything once you’ve arrived. It compresses genuine adventure, five-star comfort and properly good food into one walkable precinct, under an hour from the Sydney CBD, with the added bonus of sitting close to Western Sydney’s new international airport for anyone flying in rather than driving.

And for families with teenagers, it offers something that’s genuinely hard to find elsewhere… activities that are challenging rather than childish, enough independence that they’re not glued to a parent’s side, and enough shared moments that it still feels like a family trip rather than a drop-off.

I came home having done far less falling than the girls and far more watching than I expected.But  I’d also somehow become the person suggesting we come back, which was mildly concerning given I’d started the weekend wondering whether this place was a cult. Turns out it might be. And one I’m quite happy to join.

Panthers Entertainment Precinct – need to know

Getting there: Panthers is roughly 50 minutes’ drive from the Sydney CBD, with train stations at both Penrith and Kingswood nearby if you’d rather not drive at all.

Where to stay: The Pullman Sydney Penrith sits inside the precinct itself, a few minutes’ walk from Aqua Golf, iFLY and Cables Wake Park.

What to book ahead: iFLY and Cables Wake Park sessions are worth booking online in advance, particularly on weekends.

The post Panthers Penrith with kids: The ultimate family weekend in Western Sydney appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Keep Portland Wierd © Aleney de Winter

Portland, Oregon, has built a reputation for being weird. Look closer and you’ll find something more interesting… a city shaped by individuality, counterculture and a remarkable willingness to let people be themselves.

Most cities want you to arrive with a good excuse for being strange. Portland wants to know what kind of strange, so it can point you towards your people.

Those people might include the guy in the flapping vampire cape dancing down the street like he has somewhere very important to haunt. Or the one dressed as Darth Vader, riding a unicycle and playing bagpipes that shoot fire. Or the man in the purple cowboy hat, well, honestly, purple everything, playing chess with kids at the Portland Saturday Market. They might have blue hair, green hair or neon pink hair. But they could just as easily have mousy brown hair and be wearing a navy twinset and sensible beige trousers, ordering coffee right alongside someone in six layers of velvet and rainbow socks.

Because that’s the thing about Portland, Oregon. Nobody here is particularly interested in asking you to tone yourself down. Or up. Nobody’s asking why, full stop. Portland has spent decades making room for the oddballs, outsiders, artists, activists and people who simply don’t fit neatly into the box. The weirdness is what you see. The acceptance underneath it is what makes the city interesting.

And maybe that’s why the only question anyone seems interested in asking in this city is what you’re doing later… and whether you’ve eaten, which, let’s face it, is probably going to be somewhere weird.

A history of acceptance

Steel bridge in Portland’s historic Old Town © Aleney de Winter

The instinct for making room for people who don’t quite fit goes back a lot further than the Keep Portland Weird bumper stickers you see slapped on every second Subaru.

In Old Town, the city’s historic core, you can still trace the outlines of an earlier Portland shaped by logging and timber workers dragging felled trees down greased wooden skid roads towards the mills. When the work dried up, those same workers ended up in the cheap hotels and saloon-heavy streets nearby. By the 1890s, the neighbourhood had acquired the name Skid Row, a phrase that would eventually travel far beyond Portland to describe places where hard luck had gathered. My point isn’t that Skid Row was some early example of Portland being wonderfully accepting. That would be pushing the history too far. The point is that Portland’s story has long involved making physical and social room for people living outside the polished mainstream.

In 1970, Portland pulled off something that sounds less like political smarts and more like the local government had been gargling bong water. You see, Nixon was due in town. The FBI told Oregon Governor Tom McCall that tens of thousands of anti-war protesters might show up at the same time, with the kind of powder-keg potential that had turned the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago into a literal bloodbath. But McCall’s move was not to lock the city down. Instead, he handed the hippies a state park. The result was Vortex I, which ran for a week at Milo McIver State Park, with the state paying for it and police instructed to intervene only when things became genuinely dangerous. Bands played. Food co-ops fed people. Community clinics treated the crowd. Somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 people showed up. Nixon cancelled his visit. McCall figured he’d just destroyed his political career.  He won re-election in a landslide. Duh.

Portland, out loud

Alberta Arts District © Aleney de Winter

The same instinct shows up in Portland’s queer history, although here the story is less about one left-of-field political stunt and decades of people simply refusing to disappear. Sam Adams became the first openly gay mayor of a major American city in 2008.

Long before that, for more than fifty years, Walter Cole performed as Darcelle XV at the club that carried his name, working his way from local curiosity to load-bearing civic institution. Darcelle XV Showplace eventually landed on the National Register of Historic Places, while Cole was recognised by Guinness as the world’s oldest performing drag queen before his death in 2023. When he died in 2023, Portland named a downtown plaza for him, carving his name permanently into its own map.

Portland never developed one neat, designated gay village. Queer life spread through the city instead, becoming part of the broader anything-goes character, and that same sense of acceptance is still visible everywhere from Harvey Milk Street in downtown to Alberta Street in Northeast Portland, where queer-friendly businesses, artists and performers sit comfortably alongside galleries, vintage shops, bars and the neighbourhood’s general bohemian chaos.

Keep Portland Weird

There’s something wonderfully Portland about the way all its history just sits next to itself, unbothered. A drag performer becomes a civic landmark. A Republican governor solves a protest crisis by throwing a festival. A record-store owner decides his city needs more weird and starts printing that opinion onto bumper stickers.

That record-store owner was Terry Currier, who in 2003 started handing out Keep Portland Weird stickers, an idea he’ll happily admit he nicked straight off Austin. What started as a scrappy small-business campaign to keep people shopping local mutated into something bigger, and somewhere along the way it stopped being about commerce entirely and turned into a civic permission slip. And Portland has never been particularly subtle about what that permission looks like.

Where weird gets to thrive

Paxton Gate © Aleney de Winter

Making room for people with unusual ideas shows up in the places Portland has allowed them to create. Weird isn’t tucked away in some designated corner of town. It gets a shopfront, a museum, a patch of riverbank, a cinema, a garden or whatever other space someone can dream up and persuade the city to leave alone.

There’s the Freakybuttrue Peculiarium, a museum crammed with aliens, a life-sized Bigfoot and an entire alien autopsy set up for photos. The gift shop alone is worth the visit for the sheer volume of things you didn’t know you needed. Over on Mississippi Avenue, Paxton Gate serves up soaps, scents and candles alongside taxidermy giraffes and mounted beetles, all displayed with the calm of a shop that may just be the secret love child of Martha Stewart and Morticia Addams.

Then there’s McMenamins Kennedy School, a former elementary school that sat empty for nearly two decades after it closed in 1975. The neighbourhood fought to save it, so McMenamins turned it into a hotel, with the chalkboard-filled classrooms now guest rooms, the cafeteria a restaurant and quirky themed bars tucked into various corners. Even the old girls’ bathroom has been repurposed and is now a brewery, which feels like a fairly Portland solution.

Twenty minutes north of the city, out on Sauvie Island, where the farmland meets the river, someone, or thing, dragged an old boat out to sit in the shallows, spray-painted to look like a crashed UFO, and just left it there. Nobody claims it, nobody explains it, you just walk through a stretch of trees near the beach…. and there she is in all her clapped-out spacecraft glory.

Back in town, Movie Madness holds more than 90,000 titles on actual physical media, but the real reason to go is the glass cases scattered through the store, the actual knife from Psycho, a bar of soap David Fincher personally donated from Fight Club and a prosthetic ear from Blue Velvet that reportedly still has some of David Lynch’s real hair stuck to it. Keep walking towards the back and you’ll hit a section labelled, with zero irony, Bizarre. Because things can always get weirder in Portland.

Even little weirdos are catered to in Portland. The Portland Aquarium has never had a single fish in it. No tanks, no water, not even a puddle, just one local artist’s six immersive biomes of hand-drawn sea creatures with their own soundtracks and a hidden character the kids hunt down room by room. It’s basically the vegan version of an aquarium… all imagination, zero animals and beloved by kids and their grownups alike.

Trolls and Leprechauns and Witches, Oh My!

The Witch’s House. Photo by Li-Ling Chang on Unsplash

The same impulse that makes room for a man in a purple cowboy hat also makes room for a bridge nobody’s allowed to explain. Not every bit of Portland’s weirdness needs a name or a face. Some of the best of it is just whimsy left out in the open for anyone willing to go looking.

Somewhere on a quiet railway trestle at the edge of town, for no reason anybody’s ever properly explained, people have spent years tying tiny plastic trolls to the underside of the bridge, one at a time, just because.

Mill Ends Park is a a two-foot-wide patch of Portland pavement that spent decades claiming the title of the world’s smallest park… until a patch of ground in Japan finally pipped it in December 2024, with Guinness recognising the new record in 2025. It began when journalist Dick Fagan looked out his office window in 1946, spotted an empty hole in the road median where a light pole was supposed to go and decided a leprechaun had granted him a park. He planted flowers, named it Mill Ends and gave the resident leprechaun, Patrick O’Toole, a backstory. Over the years, the tiny park has hosted snail races, rose plantings, a butterfly swimming pool and, in a feat of completely unnecessary engineering, a miniature Ferris wheel lowered in by crane. Because Portland always commits hard to the bit.

The city’s whimsical streak doesn’t stop there. Deep in gorgeous Forest Park sits the Witch’s Castle, a mossy stone ruin that looks like it should be home to a coven of witches, a troll or at least a grumpy goblin. But it is simply a former public toilet, abandoned and later christened the Witch’s Castle by teenagers who apparently looked at a derelict shitter in the woods and thought, yep, that’s a witch’s castle. Because give Portland a crumbling toilet in the forest and they can even turn that into folklore.

Let it all hang out

Zoobomb Pyle © Aleney de WInter

Once a year, the city really lets it all hang out. Literally. More than 10,000 people nude up for the World Naked Bike Ride, technically a protest against oil dependency, but mostly just an excuse to be gloriously, defiantly starkers in public.

Every Sunday night, a different crowd rides kids’ bikes, the smaller the wheels the better, down from the zoo through the West Hills in the pitch dark at speeds that should really require a licence. It’s called Zoobomb, and the city liked it so much they commissioned a seventeen-foot sculpture downtown just to store the tiny bikes in between rides, a gold-plated toddler’s bicycle mounted on a spiral pillar in the middle of a traffic island. Somewhere a city planner signed off on that with a completely straight face.

In April, a third crowd descends on a leafy roundabout in Ladd’s Addition for the Ladds 500, where the whole point is riding around the same roundabout 500 times, dressed as dinosaurs, gnomes or whatever else seemed like a good idea that morning, under a motto the organiser is happy to put his name to…. let’s do something stupid,

And come August, fully grown adults haul homemade soap cars; past entries have included Batmobiles, Flintstones cars and a giant slice of cheese driven by two helmeted mice, to the top of Mt Tabor and let physics do the rest while everyone else drinks and watches from the grass.

Eat weird

Hawthorne Asylum © Aleney de Winter

Even the food here comes with an invitation attached. Whatever you’re hungry for, however strange your taste runs, there’s a plate, a cart or a whole neighbourhood in Portland built specifically to feed it. There are food-cart pods that turned spare patches of asphalt into places where cooks could build businesses without first finding the money for a traditional restaurant. Hawthorne Asylum is one of the biggest, with more than 20 carts, a beer hall, fire pits and coffee served from an actual aeroplane fuselage. And yes, it is named after the asylum that once stood on the site because Portland saw no reason to let a perfectly good former psychiatric hospital go to waste.

Near the Burnside Bridge, which separates Portland’s east and west sides, there’s Voodoo Doughnut, and at 1am the queue still snakes down the block, like everyone in it has been personally hexed into doughnut obsession. Across the road, the Keep Portland Weird mural looks straight down the queue, like it’s keeping tabs. Their most famous doughnut is shaped like a little voodoo doll, jam leaking out where a pretzel stick’s been jammed through it like a stake through the heart. Good for you? Absolutely not. Worth standing in line at 1am for? Obviously. Did I buy the T-shirt too? Also obviously.

Around the corner is a custard shop that isn’t just a custard shop. Order your ice cream at Black Cat Frozen Custard like a normal person… or whisper the right password and a door swings open onto Conspirator’s Coffee, a full speakeasy dressed up like somebody’s snowbound Victorian drawing room. Then there’s Raven’s Manor, a haunted mansion cocktail bar that takes the opposite approach. There’s no secret door because the whole place looks like it might already be hiding a body. Filled with haunted dolls, gothic rooms and bartenders serving cocktails in smoking beakers and skulls, there’s even an interactive elixir experience involving a fictional 19th-century doctor who kidnapped his guests and experimented on them in pursuit of immortality. Because Portland looked at the idea of a normal cocktail bar and thought, no, what this really needs is a deranged Victorian physician.

And if you’re vegan, vegetarian, or just done pretending a lettuce leaf counts as a starter, Portland rewards with meat-free, dairy-free, entirely plant-based everything and manages to make it feel like the main event rather than the sad table in the corner. There’s a vegan strip club here. Yes, a vegan strip club. There are scores of restaurants doing it properly… and serving everything from vegan tacos and ramen to Southern fried “chicken” that’ll have you double-checking the menu. For people who scour other cities for a single decent cube of tofu, this is basically the promised land. Whatever you eat, or don’t, you’ll find a seat at the table.

What makes Portland different?

Portland Saturday Markets © Aleney de Winter

Portland’s weirdness isn’t really about being strange for the sake of it. It’s what happens when people are given a bit of room to be themselves, whether that’s an artist with an idea nobody else quite gets, a drag queen who becomes a civic institution or a bunch of cyclists who think riding tiny bikes downhill in the dark sounds like a perfectly sensible Sunday night. The weirdness is the visible bit. The willingness to make room for it is what matters.

Of course, none of this means Portland is some flawless utopia where the world’s most glorious weirdos hold hands singing kumbaya beneath a rainbow. The city has had its share of serious problems, including downtown vacancies and social challenges that have tested the very idea of the welcoming city it sees itself as. But it hasn’t lost the need to make room for people, ideas and odd little corners of life that might get flattened elsewhere.

Maybe that’s what makes Portland interesting. Not the fact that it’s a little weird. Plenty of places have weird people, weird museums and people willing to set their own musical instruments on fire (well, maybe not that). Portland’s trick is making the weirdness feel like belonging.

So many people who call this quirky city home weren’t born here. Portland has long been a city of transplants. And that’s not really about location or cost of living. Though nobody’s going to complain about either. It’s because this is a place people move to when wherever they started out didn’t quite know what to do with them. Portland didn’t ask any of them to arrive polished or explain themselves before they were allowed in. It invited them to come as they are.

Somewhere among the drag queens, the hippies, the food-cart obsessives, the book nerds, the record-store romantics and the 10,000 people who turn up naked on bicycles every June, I stopped looking at Portland as a city and started seeing it as a collection of people who had figured out how to leave a little room for one another.

And it turns out, that room was big enough for me too.

The post The weird genius of Portland, Oregon appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Kennedy School in NE Portland © McMenamins

McMenamins Kennedy School is a century-old Portland elementary school turned hotel, with a brewery in the old girls’ loo, a jazz-themed secret room and detention served with a side of whisky. I mean, obviously I had to check it out. 

I got sent to my room… then took a dip and moved bars twice, and nobody, not once, told me to sit up straight. Which is lucky, because several bevvies in, I’m not sure I could have. Welcome to McMenamins Kennedy School, the Portland hotel where being kept after class is the whole point.

Officially, I was there for an art tour. Unofficially, the bars, the pool and the bevvies staged a fairly successful coup.

The building, on NE 33rd Avenue in Portland’s Concordia neighbourhood, still looks much as it did when it opened more than a century ago… a proper Italian Renaissance Revival-style school with warm walls and long wings stretching out either side of a colonnaded entrance. Except instead of kids racing for the bell, it’s guests wandering the halls in dressing gowns, with no hurry to be anywhere.

The history of McMenamins Kennedy School, Portland’s converted school hotel

Kennedy School © Aleney de Winter

The Kennedy School’s story starts in 1913, two years before the present building opened, when the first classes were held in portable one-room buildings on the site. There were just 29 children. The location was considered pretty remote, sitting three blocks beyond the end of the nearest streetcar line. It was apparently rural enough that an ordinance prohibited people from shooting rabbits from the streetcar. No, seriously… this is Portland.

The school opened its doors in 1915, named for local landowner John Daniel Kennedy, who donated artwork for the school’s 1916 dedication, and for the next sixty-odd years it did exactly what schools do. Though it moonlighted as pretty much everything else in town too. When classes weren’t running, Kennedy doubled as the neighbourhood’s town hall, a polling place on election day, a Red Cross blood drive venue and a spot for paper and tin can collection drives. It also served as a weekend playground and a flood-relief shelter. This was never just a building where kids learned long division. It was where a whole neighbourhood happened.

Which is why, when the beloved school finally shut its doors in 1975 due to dwindling enrolment, the neighbourhood took it just about as well as you’d expect. Technically, the school continued to be used as a temporary facility for other Portland schools until 1980, when it finally closed completely.

The city took one look at the ageing building and reached for the wrecking ball, but former students, past PTA presidents and a stubborn coalition of neighbours spent years fighting off demolition order after demolition order… because nobody in Concordia was prepared to let their old school become a car park without a fight. Several ideas were floated for the empty building, including a retirement home and, bafflingly, an indoor soccer facility, before Portland natives Mike and Brian McMenamin, who’d already made a habit of adopting condemned buildings the way some people adopt strays, bought the school in spring 1997.

A few months later, the original principal’s bell was rung on the front steps to mark the reopening as the very Portland and utterly unique Kennedy School Hotel, just the kind of theatrical flourish this building deserves.

Art that turns every hallway into a gallery

Words of Wisdom by J. Joy at Kennedy School © Aleney de WInter

Once you’re inside, you understand the fuss. McMenamins employs a company historian, Tim Hills, whose job on this project was tracking down blueprints, old class photos and firsthand memories from former students and teachers, then handing all of it over to a small army of artists, nearly fifty of them over the years, to turn into paintings, mosaics and wood panels covering every wall, ceiling and doorway in the building. The house style has earned its own nickname, historical surrealism, because every piece is anchored to something that genuinely happened here and then given just enough creative licence to make you stop mid-stride and squint at a wall.

The first stop on our art tour, right by the main entrance, sets the tone. Four bas-relief panels flank the doorway, and they turn out to be full-size reproductions of Luca della Robbia’s 15th-century masterworks, originally made for a cathedral in Florence. They were cast in Boston and gifted to the school for its 1916 dedication by John Daniel Kennedy, the school’s namesake, then spent time on display at the Portland Art Museum before McMenamins restored and reinstalled them in their original spot in 1997. Children dance, play trumpets and drums and read, exactly as they would have for a Renaissance cathedral, except now they’re watching guests wheel suitcases past them instead of monks.

Then for no apparent reason other than that McMenamins love a little whimsy, there’s a bronze gong display, which I am quite taken with.

Lobby artwork © Aleney de Winter

There are plenty of original details lurking behind the art. The former classrooms still have chalkboards and cloak rooms, original 1915 bas-relief panels survive… even the kid-sized drinking fountains are still there. It means you keep getting little jolts of the building’s actual past among the murals and mosaics, rather than feeling as though you’re walking through a hotel decorated to look like an old school.

The painting Words of Wisdom, by J. Joy, is an good example of the way Kennedy School’s artists fold the building’s history into the artwork. Another smaller painting called “My Modigliani” was painted by Carol Manfredi, a 1949 Kennedy School graduate, as a tribute to her old art teacher, Mrs Stella Pietila. Manfredi went on to study art formally and realised, years later, that her tall, long-necked teacher had always resembled the elongated figures painted by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, so she tucked a small replica of one of his works over Mrs Pietila’s shoulder.

A little further on again is a genuinely serious piece among all the whimsy, a triptych by the late Portland artist Charlotte Lewis that’s part tribute to the Yoruba religion and part portrait of jazz legend John Coltrane, painted in gold script with lines from a traditional West African prayer. It’s one of several Coltrane and jazz-themed works scattered through the building, a thread that Kennedy School has clearly kept pulling on.

One of my favourites is something altogether more playful, a Punch & Judy-style puppet theatre facade. It’s a wonderfully unexpected little piece to find tucked among the murals, mosaics and photographs of a former Portland school.

Where to drink at McMenamins Kennedy School

The Boiler Room at Kennedy School © McMenamins

The building’s sense of humour never lets up. Reception is in the old principal’s office, which makes checking in the first time in your life that a summons to the principal’s office has ever been good news.

Then there are the bars. Lots of them. McMenamins has managed to tuck drinking spots into former classrooms, the old boiler room and, naturally, the girls’ bathroom, so wandering the school with a drink in hand feels less like going to a hotel bar and more like discovering the school has developed a very serious drinking problem.

The onsite Concordia Brewery operates out of what used to be a girls’ bathroom, thoroughly renovated, of course, though there’s something delightfully Portland about ordering a flight of beers from a converted loo and being asked if you’d like tasting notes. The pink tiling on the walls has been left exactly as it was, a small, deliberate wink at the room’s former life, and the artwork on the brew kettles carries the joke further still, with two stern principals, two long-suffering early students and, high in the south-west corner, a painted recreation of an old rite of passage. Kennedy boys used to fling open the door and sprint the length of the unusually long room, hoping to make it out the far side before a teacher caught them.

Down in the basement sits the Boiler Room bar… all exposed pipework and industrial charm, doing the heaviest lifting of anywhere in the building for pure atmosphere. The pipes and radiator railings snaking around the stairs were welded together in 2008 by Jeff Allen, a McMenamins plumber with an artist’s eye, using salvaged fixtures from the company’s other historic properties. But before any of that, it was the domain of a real school janitor named Steve Hutton, a bagpipe-playing Scotsman remembered by students for teaching students the Highland Fling and, more improbably, for showing a kid with a freshly shattered left wrist how to throw right-handed instead. That kid, Don Johnson, went on to pitch for the New York Yankees.

There’s Detention, which used to be the janitor’s room. The old wood-burning stove is still parked in the corner, decades cold, like a retired staff member nobody had the heart to move on. I spent a very happy stretch of my afternoon there, day drinking in a room that once smelled of mop buckets, feeling like I’d finally cracked the code on what detention should have been in a perfect world.

The Honors Bar © McMenamins

If Detention is where the naughty kids go, Honors Bar is for the ones who actually did their homework. Tucked into another cosy little room, it’s deliberately scholarly, with classical and operatic music playing while the grown-ups work their way through cocktails, beer, wine and spirits. It’s also adults-only, so despite the gold-star theme, this is one classroom where the kids aren’t getting in.

Cypress Room has a completely different personality. The former classroom is now a rum-loving little hideaway, with an extensive international rum selection, a full menu and island and reggae music that may even be spinning on vinyl. There’s a Bob Marley quote painted above the bar, plus a patio out back for warmer days.

There’s also the Courtyard Restaurant, occupying the old cafeteria and spilling outside into the courtyard. It’s more restaurant than drinking den, with a full-service bar, so it’s a good option when you want an actual meal with your drink rather than another round of wandering-school-with-a-pint.

And if you’re heading to the movie theatre, you don’t even have to abandon the booze. The Kennedy School Theater Bar occupies the former classroom that serves as the cinema’s lounge and lobby, where you can grab a drink, pizza or popcorn and have it delivered to your table during the film.

By this point, you may have noticed a problem. There are enough places to drink at Kennedy School that you can genuinely spend an afternoon moving from one to the next without ever having to leave the building. Which, tbh, is probably the best reason to stay a night or two.

Ghost stories (allegedly)

Whimsical features © Aleney de Winter.

Stick around long enough and someone is bound to mention the ghosts. Because of course they will. The McMenamins Kennedy School Hotel has a reputation as one of the more haunted McMenamins properties going, and the stories cluster in oddly specific spots. A tap on the foot in the middle of the night in one particular guestroom, the sound of children laughing near where the old maypole dances were held and a women’s bathroom off the main hallway that’s earned a name as the property’s unofficial ghost sighting hotspot. There’s even a painting of a girl, based on an old class photo, that folk will tell you is haunted. More than one guest swears they’ve seen her sitting in a chair nearby in the same ‘fit, right down to the bows on her shoes.

None of this is documented in the building’s official history; it’s more anecdote and folklore. But it is a very old school, it was after dark, and I am, at my deepest core, a bona fide coward, and I’d had enough McMenamins ales for my imagination to be firing. So in the hallway between bars, I may or may not have moved fast enough to achieve a personal best.

The Testimony Secret Room at the Kennedy School

The Testimony Secret Room @ Aleney de WInter

Somewhere in the building, if you’re patient and a bit lucky with your timing, there’s also a secret room. The Testimony Secret Room only opened in December 2025, an entire hidden installation dedicated to jazz legend Charlie Parker, painted floor to ceiling in glow-in-the-dark paint. It’s more than just an abstract homage to Jazz, Charlie Parker actually played Portland as part of a now-vanished jazz scene that once thrived along Williams Avenue, a few kilometres from where Kennedy School stands today.

The installation itself is based on Yusef Komunyakaa’s 1997 work Testimony, which explores Parker’s life, with fluorescent and phosphorescent paintings, colourful cityscapes based on places Parker lived and performed, portraits of musicians he influenced and 14 scrolls carrying words from Komunyakaa’s work. The three artists behind it, Eona Skelton, Cleo Hehn and Myrna Yoder, started by painting the ceiling, seventeen feet up, with stars in varying shades of blacklight paint, so the whole room reads as a nightscape lit from above, fitting for a musician whose life was largely lived after dark.

The only clue McMenamins gives to find the room is that it isn’t always open, so you need to keep an eye on the operating hours of the smaller bars nearby to work out your window. It’s the strangest scavenger hunt I’ve ever half-heartedly attempted with a glass of wine in hand. And even then, I found it more by luck than design, which feels appropriate for a room dedicated to a man whose whole career ran on improvisation.

Family amenities at McMenamins Kennedy School

Kennedy School Theater © McMenamins

Families will love this hotel because it’s an utterly unique proposition and welcoming to every member of your crew. It isn’t one bar; it’s several, each with its own name, its own hours and its own personality, which means the grown-up guests can genuinely wander from one to the next on a hotel pub crawl of sorts, while the kids are off doing something entirely different two hallways over.

Soaking Pool © McMenamins

Whether that’s soaking in a heated pool tiled in colourful ceramics, built where the old teachers’ lounge once stood… or watching a film in the movie theatre in the old auditorium (now stuffed with couches instead of hard little chairs). Somewhere in between there’s a gymnasium hosting live music and events instead of dodgeball and a restaurant that spills out into a proper courtyard where the old cafeteria used to be.

The rooms keep the bit going too. The guestrooms in the main building are genuinely former classrooms, chalkboards and cloakrooms still intact, which delights kids in a way that’s frankly a little insulting to modern whiteboards. The newer English Wing rooms sit in the courtyard with literary themes instead, so you can choose between sleeping in an old classroom or somewhere inspired by a book or author.

Is McMenamins Kennedy School worth staying at?

Kennedy School Room © McMenamins

Absolutely! Especially if you like your hotels with a bit of personality. You can sleep in a former classroom, wander the old school corridors, drink in the old janitor’s room, soak in the pool and spend half the night discovering bits of artwork you somehow missed five minutes earlier. Where else can you check into a hotel and still feel like you might get caught out of bed after lights-out?

It’s not sleek, polished hotel luxury and that’s rather the point. McMenamins Kennedy School is weird, warm and wonderfully lived-in, with enough history and little surprises to keep you poking around lfor your enture stay.

What to know before you go

Kennedy School Restaurant © McMenamins

The Kennedy School is the kind of hotel where it pays to arrive with a little time to spare. The building is big, the bars have different opening hours and the Testimony Secret Room isn’t always open, so don’t assume you’ll be able to tick everything off in one lap.

If you’re staying overnight, I’d also book a room for the experience rather than expecting conventional hotel luxury. The rooms are full of character, the corridors aren’t exactly minimalist and the whole place is designed for wandering, drinking, eating and poking your nose into things you probably weren’t looking for.

And wear sensible shoes. You’ll do a surprising amount of wandering around this place and, if you’re like me, you’ll end up wandering half a kilometre looking for the secret bar you were sitting approximately 10 metres from for the previous hour.

History lessons

I came for the art and left thinking mostly about the people who wouldn’t let a tired old building quietly become a car park. I came away thinking about how easily this could have been a very different story. Every glowing mural and every stone-cold stove in this place exists because a neighbourhood decided their school was worth an argument.

More than four decades later, I got to get sozzled at school, on a school night, and get away with it. I did not get detention, though I did enjoy a quiet ale in the room that used to hand it out. That’s got to be worth an A+

McMenamins Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland,
OR 97211.
Ph: (503) 249-3983.

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The post McMenamins Kennedy School: Inside Portland’s Converted School Hotel appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Photo by Samuel Healey on Unsplash

Understanding drink driving offences and their consequences before you embark on your next family road trip.

School holidays have a way of turning into road trips. The car gets packed (part logistics exercise, part game of Tetris), the kids battle it out over who gets to ride up front and somewhere around the third servo stop, dinner turns into a sit-down meal with a beer thrown in before we push on to the next town. After a full day of driving and wrangling teenagers who are too old for I Spy but too bored not to bicker, a cold drink at the pub feels like the finish line.

It may not sound like a big deal, but drink driving laws in NSW are strict, and the consequences of getting them wrong can follow a family well past the holiday itself, long after everyone’s forgotten what the argument over the front seat was even about.

Of course, we all know not to drink and drive, but not everyone knows how the actual charges work, what the penalties look like, or how quickly a single roadside test can turn a relaxed trip into a court date. Here’s a plain-English breakdown of what families should understand before hitting the highway.

How drink driving charges actually worK

Drink driving in NSW isn’t one single offence. It’s broken into ranges based on blood alcohol concentration (BAC), and each range comes with its own fines, disqualification periods and, in some cases, prison exposure. Worth sitting with that for a second before the next servo stop.

Low-range PCA (0.050 to 0.079): the least severe category, but still a criminal offence. First-time offenders can face a $2,200 fine and a three-month licence suspension.
Mid-range PCA (0.08 to 0.149): fines can reach $2,200 with up to nine months’ imprisonment on the table, plus a licence disqualification of up to six months.
High-range PCA (above 0.149): treated as a serious offence, with fines up to $3,300, up to 18 months’ imprisonment, and disqualification periods of up to nine months.
Special or novice range: learner and provisional drivers, along with those in professional driving roles, can be charged even below 0.050, since some licence types require zero alcohol.
Refusing or failing a breath analysis: treated with the same penalties as a high-range offence, regardless of actual BAC.

That last one catches people off guard the most. Refusing the test doesn’t avoid a charge. It triggers the harshest one going.

Why this matters for family road trips

Long weekends and school holidays are peak times for random breath testing across NSW, particularly on major routes leading out of Sydney. A driver who’s had one drink over lunch, then waits a few hours before getting behind the wheel again, might assume they’re fine. BAC doesn’t always clear as quickly as people expect, and it varies with body weight, food intake and how long ago the drink was consumed.

A few practical habits go a long way here.

• Build in a proper break after any alcohol. If lunch involves a drink, plan for several hours before the next stretch of driving, not just “one more coffee.”
• Rotate drivers where possible. Sharing the driving isn’t just about fatigue. It also means someone can have a drink at a stop without putting the whole trip on hold.
• Know the local rules, not just the general ones. Special range and novice conditions catch out learner and provisional drivers who assume the normal 0.05 limit applies to them.

These are the small, unglamorous pieces of preparation that shown up on a good car emergency kit checklist. The ones that don’t matter until the moment they really do.

What actually happens if you’re charged

If a driver is charged, the case usually goes one of two ways in court.

Pleading not guilty means the matter is adjourned for a defended hearing, where police must present evidence and can be cross-examined. Pleading guilty moves straight to sentencing, where the court weighs the facts, the driver’s record and any supporting material before deciding on a penalty.

In both situations, understanding drink driving charges early on makes a real difference to how the case unfolds, since the options available (from negotiating the charge to preparing character references for sentencing) depend heavily on getting good advice before the court date, not after.

Planning ahead matters more than people think

None of this needs to cast a shadow over a family holiday. Most road trips go entirely without incident, and being aware of the rules is usually enough to avoid a problem in the first place. It’s worth applying the same planning mindset used for finding the right car for a NSW road trip to the driving arrangements themselves: sort out who’s driving, when, and what everyone’s plans are around alcohol, before the trip starts rather than halfway through it.

A family road trip should be remembered for the detours and the servo snacks, not a roadside breath test gone wrong. A little planning keeps it that way.

The post Understanding drink driving offences and their consequences appeared first on boyeatsworld.

The House of the Seven Gables is a museum now, the centrepiece of a small historic site on Salem’s waterfront where you can buy a ticket, join a guided tour and climb the narrow attic stairs the same way I did on a grey Salem afternoon.

It hasn’t always had seven gables, though. The real building has been added to, subtracted from and rebuilt across more than three centuries, and the version visitors walk through today owes as much to a twentieth-century restoration chasing a novel’s description as it does to its own history. The book came first. The distinctive seven-gabled form came later, once fiction had made the house famous enough to need them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Family Connection to the House of the Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables was built in 1668 by a sea captain named John Turner and stayed in the Turner family for three generations before the fortune ran out and the house passed to another seafaring family, the Ingersolls.

Susanna Ingersoll, who inherited the house, was a cousin of the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804 and already famous on both sides of the Atlantic for The Scarlet Letter by the time he started visiting her there. Listening to her stories about the place, he found the setting for his second novel. He never lived in the house himself. He borrowed it, the way he borrowed most things from his family, and turned it into a confession.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn’t born Hawthorne. He was born Hathorne, and sometime in his twenties he started spelling it differently, adding a single letter that put just enough distance between himself and the family name. The man he was trying to get away from was his own great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, a magistrate who sat in judgement during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Unlike his fellow judge Samuel Sewall, who later stood up in his Boston church and confessed his guilt to the whole congregation, Hathorne apologised for none of it. He died believing he’d been right.

A curse Hawthorne didn’t have to invent

Published in 1851, The House of the Seven Gables tells the story of a Puritan colonel who accuses his neighbour, a carpenter named Matthew Maule, of witchcraft purely so he can seize Maule’s land. Maule is hanged for a crime he didn’t commit, and at the gallows he curses the colonel with the words God will give him blood to drink. The colonel gets his house and his curse too, dying of a sudden haemorrhage on the day the building is finished, blood staining his shirt exactly as promised. The curse then works its way down through generations of Pyncheons until the family is finally, narrowly, freed from it.

Hawthorne didn’t invent that curse. Sarah Good, the same woman whose four-year-old daughter spent eight months chained in a Boston jail while her mother stood trial, the same woman who I wrote about here, is recorded saying almost the same words on the scaffold to the minister pressing her to confess. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take my life, she is also associated in later retellings with the line “God will give you blood to drink”, though historians treat this as folklore rather than a verbatim transcript. Local legend has it that the minister died decades later of an internal haemorrhage. The story has been passed down ever since as proof the curse had landed exactly where it was aimed. Whether or not that’s true, Hawthorne knew the line well enough to lift it almost word for word and hand it to a fictional carpenter in a story about a family that built its fortune on someone else’s false conviction.

There’s a more personal grudge buried in the plot too. Hathorne, in the real trials, pursued a wealthy Salem merchant named Philip English and condemned his wife Mary to die as a witch. She escaped, fleeing the colony before the sentence could be carried out, but the dispute over English’s land and money between the two families lingered for years afterwards. Hawthorne grew up knowing that history, and when he needed a story about a powerful man manufacturing a witchcraft charge to steal a poorer man’s land, he didn’t have to look past his own family tree to find it.

Visiting the House of the Seven Gables Today

There’s plenty to see here beyond the literary connection too. The mansion is the oldest surviving seventeenth-century wooden house in New England, and the site has grown well past its original walls. Hawthorne’s actual birthplace, a much smaller home he lived in until he was six, was moved here in 1958 and sits a short walk from the mansion, his father’s portrait and the desk he wrote at now on permanent display inside it. The famous secret staircase, the one I climbed myself, was added by Caroline Emmerton when she restored the house into a museum in 1908, inspired by the novel rather than any genuine evidence one had ever existed there. The seaside gardens she planted along the harbour are still maintained today, and the view alone is worth the ticket. None of it needs the curse to be worth the visit.

But the bones underneath the restored gables are real enough. A judge who never said sorry. A grandson who inherited guilt he hadn’t personally earned and spent his whole career failing to put down. A curse borrowed from a woman his own family helped hang.

Hawthorne added one letter to his name and called it distance. It was never going to be enough, not when the house he made famous was built, in fiction and in fact, on inherited guilt.

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The post Salem’s most famous house has a history darker than its namesake novel appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash

Salem hanged nineteen innocent people in 1692 for the crime of witchcraft. Not a single one of them was a witch. Three centuries on, the women that town tried to erase have become the reason the world keeps coming back.

One of the accused wasn’t even old enough to understand what was happening to her. Dorothy Good was just four years old when magistrates examined her, extracted a confession from the frightened and confused child and had her chained in a Boston jail.

Her confession was its own small horror. Under questioning, Dorothy said a snake had bitten her and left a mark and that the snake belonged to her mother. A four-year-old had just told the court her own mother kept a familiar that fed on her blood. The magistrates wrote it down as evidence.

Nobody even bothered to get her name right. Court papers repeatedly call her Dorcas instead of Dorothy, an error that stuck for centuries. That single careless detail tells you exactly how seriously this four-year-old girl was taken by the grown men deciding whether she lived or died. There was no separate accommodation for a child in a Massachusetts jail in 1692, so Dorothy was shackled the same way an adult prisoner would be, in a cell built for adults, through a New England winter. While Dorothy would survive her ordeal, she spent the better part of eight months in that cell and was still locked up when her mother, Sarah Good, was hanged.

Witch was always code for woman

Look closely at the people who were accused, and the pattern is hard to miss. Fourteen of the nineteen hanged were women, and most of the men swept up alongside them were married to, related to, or defending the accused.

Rebecca Nurse was 71, devout and well liked in the village, but it didn’t save her.

Bridget Bishop was around sixty, married four times, and ran a tavern where she let young men drink and play shuffleboard past dark, dressed in a red bodice the town considered scandalous on a woman her age. She’d already survived one witchcraft accusation twelve years earlier and had been acquitted. The second one didn’t let her go. More witnesses testified against her than against anyone else in the entire panic, including a man who swore under oath that she’d visited him in the night wearing that same red bodice and sat on his chest until he couldn’t breathe, a nightmare the court accepted as evidence. She was the first to hang on June 10, 1692.

Another of the accused was Sarah Good. Poor, homeless and sharp-tongued when she begged for charity, these traits made her an easy target before they made her and her own daughter victims of the trials.

None of this was incidental. Age in a woman read as evidence. Independence read as evidence. Grief, sexuality, poverty, a sharp tongue and a too-comfortable claim on land or money a man wanted, all read as evidence in a way none of it ever did for a man standing in the same room. The crime was never witchcraft. The crime was being a woman who’d stopped making herself smaller to keep the peace.

Salem wasn’t unique in this, just unusually well remembered. Across three centuries of witch panics that swept Europe before America was even a colony, historians estimate somewhere between forty and sixty thousand people were killed for witchcraft. The overwhelming majority of them women. Widows. Midwives. Women who owned land a man wanted or who simply refused to shrink to the shape their era demanded. Salem was a late, small chapter in something far larger and far bloodier. It’s the one the world remembers anyway, probably because America likes to imagine its founding story started clean and Salem is the stain it has never managed to write out.

Remembering the accused 

The Salem Witch Trials Memorial sits right alongside the Old Burying Point Cemetery. Standing inside it, fresh off the train from Boston, I could feel exactly how deliberately the whole space had been built to make you feel something. Chosen from 246 international entries for the trials’ three hundredth anniversary in 1992, every part of it is doing work. You cross a stone threshold carved with the accused’s own protests of innocence, lifted straight from the court transcripts… the words sliced off mid-sentence by the wall itself.

‘God knows I am innocent,’ reads one. And then nothing… The cut-off isn’t a flaw in the stonework. It’s the point. Nobody finished listening to these people the first time either.

I read every name because they deserve to be more than a body count.

Bridget Bishop. George Burroughs. Martha Carrier. Martha Corey. Giles Corey. Mary Easty. Sarah Good. Elizabeth Howe. George Jacobs Sr. Susannah Martin. Rebecca Nurse. Alice Parker. Mary Parker. John Proctor. Ann Pudeator. Wilmot Redd. Margaret Scott. Samuel Wardwell. Sarah Wildes. John Willard.

Inside the memorial, twenty granite benches jut out from a low stone wall, one for each of them, each etched with a single name, a method of execution and a date. Locust trees, the same kind believed to have been used for the hangings, are planted around the space. They are the last trees in Salem to flower each spring and the first to lose their leaves. Behind the wall, the headstones of the old cemetery face inward, like witnesses who watched it happen and said nothing at the time.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, dedicated the memorial in 1992. One line from his address has stayed with me since I first read it on a plaque there. “We still have our Salems,” he said.

I’m not easily rattled, and I’ve stood in my share of places built to hold grief, but running a finger along Sarah Good’s bench, already knowing her four-year-old was locked in a cell somewhere nearby while this was happening, hits differently when you’re a woman and a mother yourself. It stops being history and starts to feel like a warning, addressed directly to you.

It took 329 years to properly say sorry

Massachusetts moved reasonably fast to admit it had been wrong by the standards of the era. Convictions were reversed, and a handful of families were compensated within twenty years. But clearing every name took centuries longer than the killing did. A formal apology arrived in 1957. But five victims, including Bridget Bishop, weren’t legally cleared until 2001.

The last name on the list belonged to Elizabeth Johnson Jr, who was just 22 years old when she was convicted in 1693. She was never executed, but she was never pardoned either and her name sat on the books as a legally convicted witch for the next 329 years. Nobody got around to fixing it until a class of eighth-grade civics students in nearby Andover found her case, wrote the bill themselves and talked a state senator into attaching it to a budget bill. Massachusetts finally cleared her name in 2022.

A room full of teenage girls did what three centuries of adults hadn’t bothered to finish.

The witch who built the Salem brand

Modern Salem’s entire witch economy traces back to one woman who decided the label was worth keeping. Laurie Cabot moved to Salem in 1970 and opened the town’s first witch shop at a time when openly practising Wicca could cost a woman her job, her marriage or custody of her children.

That wasn’t paranoia. As recently as the early 2000s, an Indiana court ordered a Wiccan father to keep his young son away from his own religious beliefs and rituals, ruling them too “non-mainstream” to be safely passed on, and it took a civil liberties lawsuit to get the order overturned. That was not 1692. That was just two decades ago.

Despite the risk, Cabot did it anyway, in black robes and kohl eyeliner, on streets where women had been hanged for less. In 1977, then-governor Michael Dukakis named her the Official Witch of Salem, technically in recognition of her work with children with learning difficulties, and in doing so, handed an entire town its founding myth twice over.

Every tarot reader, candle shop and guided witch walk on Essex Street today exists because one woman refused to whisper a word her town had once used to kill people who looked like her.

Walk into stores like Hauswitch or Crow Haven Corner now, both run by women who treat the craft as something real rather than costume, and the sincerity catches you off guard. I sat for an aura reading at Hauswitch that left me shaken by its spot-on accuracy. Crow Haven Corner, a few doors down, is the same shop Cabot opened, though she renamed when she moved it from Derby Street to Essex Street a year after that first opening. It’s been in someone else’s hands for the last couple of decades, but it’s the place I went from a reformed sceptic to willing participant in a guided witch circle dance before I’d properly clocked what I’d agreed to.

Further along Essex Street, a nine-foot bronze statue of Bewitched’s Samantha grins from Lappin Park, a few minutes’ walk from the Witch Trials Memorial. When the statue went up in 2005, some Salem residents objected to exactly that, a fictional, friendly witch standing this close to where real ones were killed for nothing. Somehow it isn’t grotesque, not to me anyway. I can’t help but smile every time I pass it.

Reclaiming the word witch

None of this makes Salem comfortable, and it shouldn’t. The instinct that turned fear of an unconventional woman into a capital charge in 1692 hasn’t disappeared; it has only changed its paperwork. In 2022, the same year Massachusetts finally got around to clearing Elizabeth Johnson Jr’s name, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and several states moved, within months, to criminalise abortion. Almost all of those laws claims an exception to save the mother’s life. But it only applies once it’s almost, and in several cases actually, too late. Three hundred and thirty years apart, and the gap between then and now is smaller than anyone buying a broomstick keyring on Essex Street would like to admit.

The instrument has changed. The target hasn’t.

What Salem has done, deliberately or not, is refuse to let the word that condemned those women go on meaning what its accusers intended. It didn’t get over what it did to those nineteen people. It decided that if the word ‘witch’ was always going to follow them through history, they may as well be the ones who get to decide what it means.

I love this strange, sincere, slightly absurd little city more than almost anywhere else I’ve been, and that affection is tangled up with everything above, not separate from it. Salem doesn’t let you have the tarot readings and the candle shops without the memorial three minutes down the road. It refuses to let you pretend any of this is finished business.

Most places want to be remembered fondly. Salem wants to be remembered accurately, even if that costs visitors a little comfort.

For more Massachusetts inspiration, tips and travel guides, try these…

The Ultimate Boston Travel Guide
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The Lenox Hotel Boston
How to spend 48 hours in Salem, Massachusetts

The post Salem: The US town that turned a curse into a calling appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Illuminate Adelaide © Aleney de Winter

If you’re planning a trip around Illuminate Adelaide this year, here’s the full rundown, what to book first and what to save for a slow afternoon.

I have a new favourite way to spend an evening in July, and it involves seven-metre glowing skeletons, an underwater world made of digital plankton and an enormous forest of fluorescent faces.

Illuminate Adelaide 2026, now in its sixth year, is on now and is bigger and brighter than ever. The 2026 program runs from 1 to 19 July, with more than 100 events across the CBD and beyond, including world premieres and exclusive experiences you won’t find anywhere else in the country. A mix of free and ticketed events, Illuminate Adelaide is South Australia’s winter light festival, produced by the Illuminate Adelaide Foundation in partnership with the South Australian Government.

Night Visions @ Aleney de Winter

Every event runs rain or shine, so a grey Adelaide sky is no reason to cancel plans. Just remember to dress for the season. Night temperatures often sit under 8 degrees Celsius, so a proper coat and shoes you can walk in for hours will serve you well as you’ll want to be out there for as long as your feet will let you.

City Lights, the free Adelaide light trail

Piano Walk – Amigo and Amigo – River of Light in Liverpool

City Lights is the festival’s biggest drawcard and the easiest entry point if you’re new to Illuminate Adelaide, mostly because it’s completely free. The trail runs the full length of the CBD this year, starting on North Terrace, threading along Rundle Street and through to Rymill Park, and for the first time, extending out into the East Parklands.

More than 50 installations and projections line the route, so budget a solid few hours rather than a quick loop and possibly a hot chocolate stop or two to keep morale up. There’s something lovely about the way the whole city just tilts into it, buildings you’d normally walk straight past suddenly doing something strange and beautiful overhead.

Government House gets the star treatment this year courtesy of French artist Miguel Chevalier, Illuminate’s 2026 artist in residence. His work The Origin of the World floods the heritage façade with swirling cells and animated organisms.

Dream Herd by Amigo & Amigo © Aleney de Winter

A few other standouts included Whispering Mountains, a cluster of glowing, orb-like mounds scattered across the lawn outside the South Australian Museum. Piano Walk by Amigo & Amigo turns an oversized illuminated keyboard into the whole installation, forty keys you play just by stepping on them, a new composition building every few minutes as more people wander on and jump between notes. And near Frome Road, Dream Herd by Amigo & Amigo hangs over the footpath, a glowing cloud of fluffy white sheep raised up on impossibly long legs.

Birdmen at Illuminate @ Aleney de Winter

Birdmen of the Netherlands’ Close-Act Theatre. Seven metres tall, skeletal and glowing, they emerged from the dark, all knees and light. My teenager, who has perfected the art of looking nonchalant, was anything but as she excitedly followed the glowing “dino-yaurs” all the way up Rundle Street like a teen paparazzo.

Push on to Rymill Park and the trail changes mood entirely. Neon Dog Park is exactly what it sounds like, a whole scatter of glowing digital pups lit up across the lawn, and it’s the one stop where every adult in the vicinity turns back into a kid for a photo.

Cygnus © Aleney de Winter

Down on the water, CYGNUS by Berlin studio Loomaland has a dozen life-sized robotic swans gliding across Rymill Park Lake in slow, synchronised turns, genuinely one of the most beautiful things on the whole trail and a nice quiet moment after the noise of the East End.

And if you need a break, LUMEN Bar on North Terrace has gone full acid jazz this year, pairing live performances from Elder Conservatorium musicians with snacks created by chefs from the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus. It runs the length of the festival, so there’s no excuse not to sit down for a bit, warm your hands around a glass and let someone else do the walking for a while.

Night Visions at Adelaide Botanic Garden 

Night Visions Illuminate Adelaide 2026 © Aleney de Winter

If you only book one ticketed experience at Illuminate Adelaide 2026, make it this one. This was, hands down, our favourite part of the whole festival.

Night Visions takes the Adelaide Botanic Garden after dark and turns it into something otherworldly, with six zones built by six different artists. Along Ficus Avenue, the old tree canopies get turned into a forest of First Nations faces and stories and the Bamboo Walk becomes an otherworldly tunnel.

Then the Bicentennial Conservatory turns into a pulsing, multi-faceted jewel box with coloured laser beams pouring through the rainforest canopy, bouncing off leaves and tree trunks in time with a soundtrack that shifts between music and actual nature sounds, so you genuinely can’t tell where the garden ends and the artwork begins.

“Canopy” by Robin Fox © Aleney de Winter

Paths that are perfectly ordinary in daylight turn genuinely disorienting after dark, in a good way, but the exhibits are beautifully paced across those six zones and never feel rushed, which matters when you’re wrangling a teenager who normally loses interest in anything within about four minutes flat.

There’s a snack stop about halfway round, hot doughnuts included. Night Visions runs the length of the festival and sells out every single year, especially Friday and Saturday sessions, so book well ahead.

Immersive illuminations

RarriRarri © Aleney de Winter

The Art Gallery of South Australia is one of our favourite Illuminate stops. Rarrirarri, tucked into the Radford Auditorium, is an immersive audiovisual work by The Mulka Project honouring the late Yolŋu artist Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda, her family’s own songlines woven through the soundscape. It runs ten to fifteen minutes, and we sat in the dark well after it finished, letting it settle. My teenager even managed to put her phone away for the entire thing, which felt like its own small miracle.

Pixel Waves at Adelaide University’s Bonython Hall © Aleney de Winter

Elsewhere in the festival, Pixel Waves turns the floor of Adelaide University’s Bonython Hall into a responsive light surface that reacts to every footstep. I watched both toddlers and a grown man in a very expensive coat spiral across it trying to trigger every possible pattern. No judgement. I did the same thing thirty seconds later, while my teenager stood off to the side slowly dying of secondhand embarrassment.

Digital Abyss at ILA runs the length of the festival and is worth the ticket price. Miguel Chevalier has created an immersive underwater world of luminous digital plankton and interactive projections that run 30 to 45 minutes and are genuinely mesmerising from start to finish. The room is dark and close and quiet in a way that makes you lower your voice without really meaning to.

Relaxed sessions with reduced capacity and lower sound are available here, as they are at Night Visions and Universal Kingdom, a thoughtful touch for anyone who finds the full sensory version a bit much.

Augmented Games

Augmented Games, Moment Factory

Augmented Games at Adelaide Showground was the loudest fun we had all trip and also the one people tend to ask me the most questions about, because it’s genuinely hard to picture until you’re standing in it.

Created by Moment Factory, the studio behind past Illuminate favourites Light Cycles and Resonate, the whole thing is built inside a blacked-out hall at the Showground, floor-to-ceiling motion-tracking cameras reading every move you make and turning it straight into the game on screen. There’s no headset, no handhelds and no app. Your body is the controller.

You dodge, lunge, duck and swipe at light while giant projections react in real time while people around you shriek and laugh at their own reflexes, or lack thereof. Each game base is split into eight different games, so you’re straight into the next one before you’ve caught your breath from the last. Some are pure reflex, dodging and slapping at fast-moving targets. Others require moving your whole body, which is a lot more demanding than it sounds forty minutes in. A couple lean into teamwork, where the group has to move together to keep something alive on screen, which is where most of the shouting comes from.

My teenager beat me at every single game, though I maintain the third round was rigged.

Illuminate Adelaide music

Music has real teeth at Illuminate Adelaide 2026. Unsound Adelaide spreads across multiple venues with a genuinely boundary-pushing lineup, including New York rapper billy woods, Actress and Suzanne Ciani’s Concrète Waves project, Hania Rani’s Chilling Bambino and Japanese sound artist FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA alongside New York composer Ka Baird.

Supersonic transforms Hindley Street Music Hall into an underground rave for one night only, curated by Motez and headlined by Skin On Skin. And The Lost Art of Listening, presented by Vitalstatistix, is a quieter, stranger proposition, cult pianist Erik Griswold leading a performance that involves the audience and their phones in ways I won’t spoil here.

Universal Kingdom Ice Age at Adelaide Zoo

Piano Walk – Amigo and Amigo – River of Light

This is the third and final year for Illuminate’s Universal Kingdom Ice Age at Adelaide Zoo, so if you’ve been putting it off, now’s the time. Illuminated woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers roam alongside Australia’s own prehistoric megafauna, including a very large diprotodon (AKA an enormous wombat-adjacent critter that is the largest known marsupial to have ever lived), all built through giant lanterns and puppetry, with interactive zones scattered through for anyone who wants to poke around rather than just look.

And walking the zoo grounds at night, empty of the usual daytime crowds, offers its own quiet joy even before the mammoths show up.

Where to eat during Illuminate Adelaide

The food program has expanded considerably for 2026, and this is where I’d happily lose many nights. Ocean To Plate at the Adelaide Convention Centre is a multi-course South Australian seafood dinner set inside ocean-inspired projections, running Friday 10 and Saturday 11 July. Symphony of the Senses pairs a live Adelaide Symphony Orchestra performance with French-inspired canapés at Sofitel Adelaide’s Garçon Bleu on Wednesday, 15 July. Illuminate After Dark is a cheese and caviar masterclass with Valérie Henbest of Smelly Cheese inside the Adelaide Central Market on Tuesday 7 July, exactly the kind of Tuesday night I want more of in my life.

Beyond the ticketed dinners, Illuminate brings more than 30 CBD restaurants and bars into the festival with exclusive menus running throughout, so even a casual dinner out gets a little Illuminate magic stirred through it. There’s a real warmth to eating out during the festival, with steamed-up windows, candlelight and a city full of people who’ve come to eat, drink and be merry.

Illuminate Adelaide accessibility

The access program is genuinely strong this year. Companion Cards are accepted across the board with a second ticket provided at no cost. Relaxed sessions run for Night Visions, Augmented Games, Digital Abyss and Universal Kingdom, with reduced capacity, lower sound and less haze for neurodiverse visitors and anyone with sensory needs. Seniors’ sessions are available for Augmented Games, plus audio-describe,  Auslan-led and seniors tours for the City Lights trail. A Quiet Space sensory backpacks and a sensory bus are also available this year. It is worth checking the official access page closer to your visit for confirmed details.

More to see and do in Adelaide this July

Illuminate is the main event but it’s far from the only reason to be in Adelaide this month. The Art Gallery of South Australia’s Monet to Matisse, Defying Tradition opens on 11 July as part of the Winter Art Series, bringing works by Monet, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso to the city, a proper reason to build an extra afternoon into your trip beyond the festival’s own gallery installations.

Nearby at the South Australian Museum, the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize runs alongside it, 74 finalist works celebrating the natural world in extraordinary detail, well worth an hour if you need a break from the cold and the crowds.

Up in the Hills, the Winter Reds Festival runs from July 24 to July 26, bringing cool-climate wines, fireside tastings and live music to wineries across the region, with Matt Preston on board as ambassador this year – a genuinely lovely way to spend a Saturday if you’re happy to trade city lights for cellar doors for a day.

Illuminate Adelaide runs until 19 July 2026. The full program and tickets are available at illuminateadelaide.com.

The post Illuminate Adelaide 2026, Everything You Need to Know About Adelaide’s Winter Light Festival appeared first on boyeatsworld.

HAIR the Musical, Theatre Royal Sydney. © Ben Fon

As a parent, there have been many moments when I have questioned my judgement. Sitting next to my 15-year-old as the cast of HAIR the Musical dropped trips and trousers at the Theatre Royal Sydney on opening night was amongst them. For all of about three seconds. After that, all bets and clothing (theirs, not ours) were off.

To be fair, I did know what I was getting into. HAIR, the Grammy and Tony Award-winning tribal love-rock musical that first shocked audiences back in 1967, has never been shy about making its point or about getting naked. What I’d forgotten, given I’m of a similar vintage and my memory is not what it used to be, was to warn my daughter… and just how many shades of red her face can turn.

Tane Williams-Accra as Hud in HAIR the Musical © Daniel Boud

But here’s the thing. Despite its lack of a G rating, HAIR is as relevant to teens in 2026 as it has been to any audience in its almost 60 years. War is dominating headlines, social divisions are widening and the world is seemingly hell-bent on repeating every mistake a generation once took to the streets to fight against. In fact a musical built around peace, protest and the radical notion that love might just be the answer feels less like nostalgia and more like a despatch from the future.

But enough with the earnestness, because HAIR earns its stripes not just for its message but for pure theatrical joy. The title song alone is worth the ticket price. It’s a glorious, roof-lifting declaration that somehow manages to be about hair and everything that isn’t hair all at once. And then there’s the extended psychedelic trip sequence in act two, which is as cleverly staged as anything I’ve seen on a Sydney stage. In fact, it’s so genuinely transporting that I have to wonder whether the creative team conducted some rather extensive field research. For Art. Of course.

Alex Cooper as Claude in Hair the Musical. © Daniel Boud

The entire cast is brilliant, led by Alex Cooper as Claude, an idealistic soul desperately trying to hold himself together as the world pulls him in every direction at once. Cooper is extraordinary in the role, playing him with such joyful, aching sincerity that you feel his every impossible choice. Maxwell Simon is magnetic as the anarchic Berger, and Tane Williams-Accra as Hud, delivers hilarious one-liners while thrilling the crowd with his soulful vocals.

Rosie Meader as Jeanie in Hair the Musical. © Daniel Boud

Rosie Meader as the comically pregnant Jeannie is a delight. Another standout is Maverick Newman, who plays Leonard but whose real gift to this production is his scene-stealing turn as Iris, a comically outraged audience member who storms the stage and has the opening night crowd in stitches.

Not exactly G-rated, the show’s notorious nude scene – along with a cheerful roll call of drugs in the third song – are, of course, what prompted those three seconds of parental doubt. But it is bold, beautiful and surprisingly moving. Controversial in 1967, it remains genuinely impactful today, closing act one on a note of pure, defiant liberation. Act two, in turns hilarious and heartbreaking, is where HAIR brings emotional weight, the free-spirited chaos of act one giving way to something altogether darker as the spectre of Vietnam closes in.

While it’s not 1967 anymore and political correctness has changed the way we entertain, director Glenn Elston doesn’t soften any of it. Not the confronting language, the racism, the persecution of queer people or the spectre of war that hangs over every scene. The production is better and braver for it.

HAIR the Musical is playing at Theatre Royal Sydney until 12 July © Daniel Boud

A generation took to the streets and believed, with genuine conviction, that love could be a political force. They never promised to fix the world. But HAIR reminds us that we were supposed to try harder.

Oh, as for my 15-year-old? Eyes wide and jaw occasionally dropped, she was on her feet at the end with the rest of the audience, giving a standing ovation to a musical she immediately declared a new favourite. Which is saying something, because that is a very, very long and extremely discerning list.

HAIR the Musical is playing at Theatre Royal Sydney until 12 July. Go. Take someone. Just maybe not your grandmother.

The post Review: Hair the Musical Sydney – Still Radical, Still Relevant. appeared first on boyeatsworld.

Haedong Yonggungsa Temple © Aleney de Winter

We explore cliff-top temples, rainbow villages and everything in between in our guide to  the best things to do in 48 hours in Busan with kids.

The alarm screams us awake at 5 AM, which is basically still yesterday. Armed with coffee and groggy determination, my daughter and I drag ourselves onto the KTX high-speed train to Busan. Despite our exhaustion, we’re hoping this ride ends better than the film version.

Happily, what we find in Korea’s second city is one of the best family destinations in South Korea, a city that flips our expectations of Korean family travel. And there’s not a zombie in sight. Well, until we catch our own tired reflections in shop windows.

BTS mural at Gamcheon © Aleney de Winter

Trading Seoul’s polish for lively markets, street food on every corner and neighbourhoods full of local character, there’s no shortage of things to do in Busan with kids, but two days is enough to cover the highlights comfortably. Busan rewards the effort in ways that Seoul, for all its brilliance, simply doesn’t. Trading the capital’s polish for lively markets, street food on every corner and neighbourhoods full of local character, it’s considerably more relaxed and manageable.

Jagalchi Fish Market © Aleney de Winter

There’s enough quirk to keep teenagers from eyerolling themselves into another dimension, enough culture to justify calling it educational and enough Korean fried chicken to keep everyone happy. And, amidst it all, you’ll find yourself having the most honest conversations about history, culture and what it means to preserve the past without embalming it.

If you are visiting Busan for the first time, here’s our tried and tested guide to the must-visit attractions and experiences to enjoy in 48 hours in Busan.

Day One: Busan’s markets, monks and murals

Jagalchi Fish Market

Jagalchi Fish Market © Aleney de Winter

Hit the ground running with lunch at Jagalchi, Korea’s largest seafood market. This place doesn’t mess around. You’ll smell it before you see it… all dried fish, ocean brine and something indefinably fishy that’s somehow completely intoxicating. Let the kids explore the outdoor tanks first. Watching spiky sea urchins and flip-flopping fish is weirdly mesmerising.

Jagalchi Fish Market © Aleney de Winter

For the best place to eat seafood in Busan, just head upstairs at Jagalchi Fish Market to the cooked food section, where you pick your seafood downstairs and they grill it to order. Point at things, nod enthusiastically and you’ll end up with a table groaning under grilled fish with crackling, caramelised skin, prawns the size of your forearm and enough kimchi to fuel a small army.

If you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective), someone at a neighbouring table will order something still wriggling. My daughter and I watched wide-eyed as a tentacle make a valiant bid for freedom.  Confronting, for sure. But it’s also honest. There’s no Instagram-filtered version of where food comes from here.

Gamcheon Culture Village

Gamcheon Culture Village © Aleney de Winter

Twenty minutes by taxi brings you to what looks like someone knocked over a paint factory on a mountainside and decided to leave it that way. Gamcheon Culture Village’s candy-hued houses are stacked impossibly on top of each other, tumbling down the hillside like a LEGO masterpiece dreamed up by someone who clearly never heard the phrase “tone it down”.

Once a refuge for those displaced by the Korean War, these steep alleys and jumbled rooftops provided sanctuary in desperate times. Today, creativity hums through every narrow lane. Murals splash across walls, sculptures pop up in unexpected corners, and rooftop cafés perch precariously above it all, offering tea with a side of spectacular views.

Gamcheon Culture Village © Aleney de Winter

What makes this place brilliant for kids is the treasure hunt aspect. Grab a map from the information centre, buy the kids a torched marshmallow ice cream from a street vendor (trust me on this—they’re like s’mores, only better), and let them lead. The village is small enough that you won’t lose anyone but big enough to feel like an adventure. Those candy-coloured houses climbing the mountain like a Cubist masterpiece? They’re even more spectacular up close. Allow two hours minimum and wear comfortable shoes.

Haedong Yonggungsa Temple

Haedong Yonggungsa Temple © Aleney de Winter

Trade Gamcheon’s chaotic colour for the tranquillity of Haedong Yonggungsa, a 12th-century Buddhist temple perched precariously on an ocean cliff that might just be the prettiest place in Busan, which is saying something.

We descend 108 stone steps flanked by bamboo and stone lanterns, the crash of waves below providing the soundtrack. A three-storey pagoda rises like a guardian, and shrines are strewn with colourful lanterns swaying gently in the ocean breeze.

My daughter stops in front of one shrine, its centrepiece a Buddha statue with an extremely shiny belly. My daughter rubs it like she is summoning a genie, and the sunset obligingly painted the sky pink and gold. Coincidence? Probably. But she’s convinced she’s blessed now, and who am I to argue?

Arrive before sunset for the best light and the best chances of good fortune. Be respectful, as this is an active temple. Oh, and entry is free, which is excellent news.

Haeundae highlights

Haeundae Beach © Aleney de Winter

Check into a hotel in buzzy Haeundae, Busan’s buzzing beach district, and prepare to hand the evening over to serendipity. Haeundae’s main street has this wonderful 70s municipal charm about it, with retro light fixtures lining the road that suggest the town planners were either visionaries or just really into vintage aesthetics. Follow the street all the way down to the beach, stop at a vendor for tanghulu (fruit skewered and dipped in a hard sugar shell that shatters satisfyingly when you bite it), and eat it while staring at the sea. There are worse ways to end a day.

Haeundae at night © Aleney de Winter

The entire area is heaving with some of the best restaurants in Busan … But we recommend ducking into Haeundae Traditional Market, a covered alley a short walk back from the beach that manages to pack an enormous amount of chaos and flavour into a very small space. Seafood restaurants line the sides, many with live tanks out front where your dinner is auditioning for the role. But there’s plenty beyond the ocean… tteokbokki (chewy rice cakes in a spicy sauce that is basically addictive), mandu (dumplings, steamed or fried, both amazing), kalguksu (hand-cut noodle soup), Korean corn dogs and cheese hotteok (crispy pancakes stuffed with gooey mozzarella). Bring cash. Most stalls don’t take cards.

Afterwards we stumbled across K-pop dancers practising their routines in the street, which thrilled my daughter more than anything we’d paid actual money to see that day. She folded her arms, tilted her head like a judge on one of those talent shows, and announced (after her whole single lesson in Seoul) that she could do better. Just quietly… she cannot.

Day Two: Busan’s coast, capsules and Korean cooking

Beomeosa

Monksat Beomeosa. Photo by Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Start the day early enough at Beomeosa and you might have it almost to yourself, an extraordinary privilege for somewhere this beautiful. Founded in 678 AD by the Great Priest Euisang at the eastern foot of Geumjeongsan, Busan’s guardian mountain, which sounds like exactly the kind of job title a mountain should have, Beomeosa Temple is one of Korea’s five great Buddhist temples, a distinction that carries genuine weight in a country this serious about its Buddhist heritage.

The valley approaching the temple is thick with wisteria, which in spring turns the whole climb into something that doesn’t feel entirely real. It carries its thirteen centuries with quiet dignity rather than tourist fanfare. There’s no gift shop crowding the entrance, no audio guide rattling off facts at volume. Walk through the Iljumun Gate, its four stone pillars dating to 1614, and you feel the shift as the noise falls away. The Daeungjeon Hall sits at the heart of the complex, stone lanterns in the ancient Silla style flanking the entrance, dragon heads carved into the eaves above for anyone who bothers to look up.

Entry is free. Allow two to three hours, wear comfortable shoes, and please keep your voice down, as this is an active temple where monks live and the devout worship.

Taejongdae Park

From the northern mountains to the southernmost tip of the city, Taejongdae is a coastal park perched on Yeongdo Island, all rugged cliffs and pine forests and sea views so dramatic they make you wonder why anyone bothered with screensavers. The park takes its name from King Taejong Muyeol of Silla, who apparently liked to come here to practise archery. Whether that’s because the views inspired him or because he needed somewhere dramatic to be regal, history doesn’t record.

The best way around is the Danubi Train. a small sightseeing train that loops the 4.3 km coastal road, partly because the terrain is steep enough to punish anyone who didn’t budget their leg energy correctly, and partly because the train is genuinely charming in that unashamedly touristy way that stops being embarrassing once you’re on it. Ride it to the Yeongdo Lighthouse, which has been shining continuously since 1906, and the spectacular “Light Beyond Limitation” sculpture at the cliff’s edge. On a clear day, you can see as far as Tsushima Island in Japan. But even on a hazy day, the view is worth getting the bus for. Entry to the park is free; the Danubi Train costs a few thousand won and is worth every one of them.

Haeundae Blueline Park Sky Capsule

Haeundae Blueline Park Sky Capsule

Back on the eastern side of the city for one of Busan’s most quirky and purely enjoyable experiences, the Sky Capsule, which is essentially a small private pod on an elevated coastal track and absolutely as good as the photos suggest. Built along a former railway line that once ran the east coast from Busan to Pohang, the track was repurposed in 2020 into a walking trail and sightseeing attraction. Taking thirty minutes, one way, from Mipo Station to Cheongsapo Station, the brightly coloured capsules fit up to four people and glide slowly enough above the sea that you have time to soak in the view.

Book online before you go. This is not optional advice. Tickets sell out, queues can reach 45 minutes even on weekdays, and there is no joy in arriving to find the only available slot is in three hours. For the best views, ride from Mipo towards Cheongsapo; the capsules run on the seaward side of the track in that direction. Ride back on the Beach Train, which covers the full coastal route to Songjeong Beach and gives you a different, more leisurely angle on the same stretch of coast.

Bapsang Cooking Class

Bapsang Cooking Class © Aleney de Winter

End your trip learning to actually cook the tasty Busan cuisine you’ve been inhaling over the previous days. In our opinion, the best Korean cooking class in Busan for families is Bapsang Cooking Class, run by the lovely Minkyung, or Min, from her own apartment, which immediately makes it feel different from every other cooking experience we’ve had. A short and rather pleasant walk along the seaside from our Haeundae hotel, this wasn’t a sterile commercial kitchen. It is someone’s home and offers us a rare, genuine glimpse into what life in Busan looks like.

We don traditional aprons, gather around preparation stations and start chopping under the guidance of Min, who has spent a career in hospitality, studied traditional Korean cuisine formally and is a certified temple chef. She proves equal parts teacher and storyteller and weaves Korean history and culture into every step… why rice is prepared this way, what different vegetables symbolise and how recipes are passed through generations.

Min guides our every step, explains substitutions for ingredients we won’t find at home, and somewhere between the chopping and the stirring manages to whip up bibimbap with bulgogi, seafood-studded pancakes and a traditional seaweed soup.

When everything is ready, we eat Korean-style… cushions on the floor with dishes arranged on a low bapsang table (which, incidentally, is optional, something my ageing back is immensely grateful for). Min adds pickles and homemade sweets, and the whole thing wraps up in about three hours. The meal is perfect. Not restaurant-perfect, but better… the kind of perfect that comes from effort and learning and doing something completely new together.

We leave with the recipes, a certificate and the slightly humbling realisation that my daughter’s version was better than mine.

Gwangalli Beach Drone Show

If you happen to be in Busan on a Saturday evening, get yourself to Gwangalli Beach for Korea’s first permanent drone show. Every Saturday night hundreds of drones are choreographed into shapes and patterns above the water in a twelve-minute performance that is completely free.

Shows run at 7pm and 9pm. Arrive early for a good spot, or arrive late and spend the whole thing peering around someone’s head, which is also an option but not one we recommend.

Gwangalli itself is worth the visit regardless of the drones. The whole area has an unhurried energy and amazing views of the Gwangan Bridge lit up at night. Not to mention a strip of excellent restaurants and cafés that are noticeably less aimed at tourists than those in Haeundae.

Optional Tongyeong day trip from Busan

Sebyeonggwan Hall in Tongyeong © Aleney de Winter

Tongyeong is perfect side quest for those who’d like to add an extra day to their itinerary. About two hours by bus from Seobu Terminal, or 75 to 90 minutes if you’re driving, an early start is non-negotiable if you plan on visiting Tongyeong, Do it anyway because it’s absolutely worth the effort.

This small coastal town nicknamed “The Naples of Korea” wore its dramatic naval history proudly long before tourists arrived. Admiral Yi Sun-sin used it as his principal base during the desperate sea battles of the 16th century, and monuments to his name dot the waterfront to this day. Yet despite all that bloodshed in its past, Tongyeong now holds a quiet, unhurried charm that makes busier Busan look positively manic by comparison.

Mount Mireuksan Cable Car and Skyline Luge

Mount Mireuksan Cable Car and Skyline Luge © Aleney de Winter

Don’t miss the cable car, Korea’s longest, up Mount Mireuksan and watch islands scatter across the horizon like pieces of an unfinished puzzle, the sea stretching endlessly in every direction. It’s the kind of view that makes you want to spout poetry or at least snap eleventy thousand photos. None of them will do it justice.

Mount Mireuksan views © Aleney de Winter

The mountain trails beckon if you have the legs for it. We did not. But what goes up must come down. And the way down is where things get properly thrilling.

The Skyline Luge sends you plunging down the slope, mountain air slapping against your face as you carve through twists and turns in a small cart you actually steer yourself. This is where you discover what kind of person your child really is. Conservative brake users or speed demons with a death wish? My daughter spent the entire ride squealing with delight and yelling at me to go faster, while I white-knuckled the brake and made a mental note to read the small print next time. We recommend booking online to skip queues, especially on weekends.

Dongpirang Village

Dongpirang Village © Aleney de Winter

Still in Tongyeong, Dongpirang is the kind of place that exists because someone refused to give up on it. In 2007, the government announced plans to demolish the whole hillside community to build a park, which would have displaced a neighbourhood of mostly elderly residents with nowhere to go. A civic group responded by launching a national mural competition, inviting artists and art students from across the country to cover every surface they could find… whether wall, fence, stairwell or water tank. The demolition plan was quietly dropped. Art saved the village.

Wander up through the alleyways, and the details reveal themselves slowly. There are fish swimming across cracked plaster, flowers trailing up stairwells, tiny creatures painted onto letterboxes and fishing boats tucked into garden walls. It’s less curated than Gamcheon and less Insta-optimised but all the better for it. The murals refresh regularly too, so even if you’ve been before, there’s always something new to find.

Climb to the summit, and the harbour fans out below, with the restored Dongporu watchtower, once used by Admiral Yi Sun-sin as an observation post, sitting at the top. The climb is steep, so bring water and take your time because this is the kind of place that rewards slow exploration.

Busan travel tips for families

Everything you need to know about the KTX to Busan

KTX busan © Aleney de Winter

The KTX from Seoul to Busan represents Korean infrastructure at its most competent… fast, punctual and comfortable enough that the journey itself becomes unremarkable, which is the highest compliment you can give public transportation. And it is entirely zombie-free. The sleek, silent beast glides quietly through mountains and fields, transforming what could be a tedious journey into a surprisingly civilised affair. Two and a half hours through countryside that transitions from urban sprawl to agricultural plains to coastal mountains, all while maintaining the kind of quiet that makes you reconsider your own country’s relationship with public space etiquette.

While our tickets were arranged by the amazing Inside Asia team, travellers can also book through the Korail app, which functions with the efficiency you’d expect from Korean digital infrastructure. The system also connects Busan to Gyeongju (ancient sites), Incheon (port architecture), and Pyeongchang (winter sports), making it viable for longer Korean itineraries beyond the Seoul-Busan corridor.

Window seats on the right offer mountain views if you care about scenery. Otherwise, use the time to read, work or simply appreciate transport infrastructure that works as designed.

Getting around in Busan

The subway is clean and efficient, and signage is in English. Get a T-Money card on arrival and top it up – it will work on subways, buses, and taxis. Kids find the beeping sound effects hilarious for approximately forty-seven stops, then mildly annoying for the remaining journey.

Taxis are plentiful and relatively cheap. Don’t be afraid to use them, especially when kids’ feet are dragging or you’re hauling shopping bags full of Korean snacks you don’t need but absolutely have to buy.

Where to stay in Busan

We recommend basing yourself in Haeundae for both nights, as it puts you within walking distance of the beach, the market and the evening street food scene, and the subway connects you easily to everything else.

For families, Paradise Hotel Busan is the splash-out option: direct beach access, a children’s pool, a kids’ club and sea views that justify the splurge.

The Westin Josun Busan sits right at the end of the beach and is the only five-star in the area with an in-house Korean restaurant, which, given what you’ll have learned in the cooking class, feels like a fitting way to end the trip.

For mid-range, L7 Haeundae by Lotte is a three-minute walk from the beach, well-run and good value. Book early for summer visits. July and August are peak season, and prices climb accordingly.

Plan your Busan family trip with Inside Asia Tours

Tongyeong © Aleney de Winter

If reading all of the above made you feel simultaneously excited and mildly exhausted, we get it. Busan is brilliant, but it rewards planning, and planning takes time that most families, frankly, don’t have. This is where InsideAsia Tours comes in.

We used them to organise our Korea trip, and the difference between having a well-designed itinerary and winging it in a country where you don’t speak the language and the transport app is in Korean cannot be overstated. Their inside guides know South Korea, not just the headline temples and markets, but the details that make the difference between a good trip and a genuinely great one. The KTX tickets that need to be booked in advance. The best cooking class. The fact that the Skyline Luge in Tongyeong is worth doing, but you need to get there early. The small print you wouldn’t have thought to read.

Their Korea tours are broad enough to suit most travellers. From small group tours that cover Seoul, Jeonju and Busan to a foodie-focused Culinary Korea itinerary for families who plan their days around eating (umm, yes, that would be us) and a Korea by Rail option that turns the KTX network itself into part of the experience. And if you’ve already done Korea and want to push further, there’s a Jeju Island extension and a Japan and Korea combination that pits bibimbap against ramen over fifteen days.

The best bit is that the majority of Inside Asia’s tours are customisable and tailor-made, which means you tell them everything from what you want to see to how many days you want to travel and whether your thirteen-year-old would rather luge down a mountain than sit through another temple… and they build your trip around it. Brilliantly.

Busan with kids – Need to know before you go

When to visit
Spring (April to June) and autumn (September to November) offer the most comfortable weather that is warm, dry and clear. Summer is hot and humid with a rainy season in July and August. Winter is cold but dry and considerably less crowded.
Language
Korean. Download Papago before you arrive. It’s better than Google Translate for Korean and works offline. Most younger Koreans speak some English, but knowing a few phrases like gamsahamnida (thank you) earns genuine smiles and sometimes better service.
Currency
Korean Won (KRW). Cards are widely accepted in restaurants, shops and hotels, though smaller market stalls and street food vendors are often cash only. ATMs are easy to find throughout the city.
Power
220V AC electricity. Type C and F plugs (the standard European two-round-pin style). Travellers from Australia, the UK or the US will need an adaptor; those with dual-voltage devices (most phones and laptops) won’t need a converter.
Visa & Passport Requirements
Visa requirements vary by nationality. Many countries, including Australia, the UK, the US and most of Europe, can enter South Korea visa-free for stays of up to 90 days for tourism. Check the current requirements for your nationality before you travel, as rules can and do change. Your passport must be valid at the time of entry.
Health
There are no mandatory vaccinations for South Korea, but we recommend visiting your GP at least six weeks before departure for up-to-date advice on recommended immunisations. Tap water in Busan is safe to drink, so bring a reusable bottle and use it.
Tipping
Tipping is not expected or customary. Service charges are generally included, and staff do not expect additional payment. You won’t cause offence by not tipping.
Etiquette
In casual dining spots, things are relaxed, but in more formal settings, the basics matter. Don’t stand chopsticks upright in rice. Pour drinks for others, not yourself. If elders are present, always wait for them to start their meal first. It is not complicated, but simple signs of respect go a very long way.

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Tong-ojingeo-gui (whole grilled squid) © Aleney de Winter

From market stalls to Michelin-stars, here’s where, how and what to eat in Busan, South Korea‘s lively and lovely second city.

Busan is a city where eating isn’t an activity you plan around your day. It is the day. It isn’t precious or performative. It’s generous, fast, comforting and deeply woven into daily life. You eat because you’re hungry, because it looks good and because it’s there.

Here’s our guide on where and what to eat in Busan,

Busan street food

Hotteok © Aleney de Winter

Street food is where Busan flexes. Start with the crowd-pleasers. Korean fried chicken arrives shatteringly crisp and glossy with sauce. And tteokbokki (spicy, chewy rice cakes) becomes an obsession. In my teen’s case, entire days are loosely planned around tracking down the best bowl.

Then come street sweets. Hotteok (street food pancakes) are pressed flat on a griddle until the outside crisps and the inside becomes molten sugar… dangerously hot, stuffed with brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts and absolutely worth the burnt tongue. Bungeoppang (fish-shaped treats filled with sweet red bean paste) are impossible to walk past. And bingsu (shaved ice topped with fruit or condensed milk) is so addictive it probably needs a warning label. Consider this yours.

Busan’s signature dishes

Dwaeji-gukbap (pork and rice soup), © Aleney de Winter

It’s a good idea to get acquainted with Busan’s other local delights. This isn’t Seoul food; instead, there’s a port city sensibility that shows up in the bowls, the broths and the banchan (small side dishes).

Dwaeji Gukbap

Probably the most Busan dish there is, Dwaeji Gukbap is a milky pork bone broth, simmered for hours until it turns white and unctuous, served with slices of boiled pork, rice and a tangle of kimchi. YLocals queue for it before 9am, and you eat it fast, standing or hunched over a low table, adjusting the heat with kimchi and a spoonful of fermented shrimp paste from the pot on the table. It’s the city’s unofficial hangover cure, a working breakfast and comfort food all at once. Do not leave without trying it.

Milmyeon

Busan’s answer to cold noodles, Milmyeon are thin wheat noodles served in an icy beef broth that’s clean, slightly sweet and deeply refreshing. There’s a spicy version too, bibim milmyeon, tossed in a crimson chilli sauce rather than swimming in broth. Both are served year-round, though locals eat the cold version even in the depths of winter, which tells you everything you need to know about how much they love it.

Ssiat Hotteok

This is the street food pancake evolved. A Nampo-dong original, the classic version of Hotteok is filled with brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts but adds sunflower seeds and other grains into the mix. The result is chewier and more textured.

Ganjang Gejang

Ganjang Gejang sounds like a challenge but rewards the brave. Raw blue crab marinated in soy sauce, left to cure until the flesh turns translucent and the roe becomes something between custard and umami paste.

Eomuk

A kind of fish cake, Eomuk is everywhere in Busan, and is considered the best in the country. At market stalls and pojangmacha (street food tents), skewers of flat, bouncy fish cake float in a clear, lightly salted broth. Take a skewer, dip it and devour it standing up

Tong-ojingeo-gui

Whole squid, grilled over open flame until the skin blisters and chars at the edges tong-ojingeo-gui is one of Busan’s most elemental street foods. Near the waterfront, vendors cook them to order and hand them over on a stick, still smoking.

Dongnae Pajeon 

While Pajeon (seafood pancakeo) os widespread, Dongnae Pajeon is a specific and iconic variation local and famous in Busan. 

The best food markets in Busan

Jagalchi Fish Market © Aleney de Winter

The city is liberally scattered with food markets rammed with tasty treats. Busan has always been a port city, which means the markets here have a particular energy… fishermen unloading directly into stalls and ajummas (aunties) grilling things on the spot. Some have been running for decades and look it; others have been cleaned up for tourists without losing too much of their character. Either way, arriving hungry is the only real requirement.

Jagalchi Fish Market

The largest seafood market in Korea, the scent of dried fish and briny sea, intense and unavoidable, will find you before the market does dried fish and briny sea. It operates on two levels: the covered indoor market downstairs where haenyeo (female free divers) sell sea cucumber from buckets and vendors spruik pungent rows of dried fish hanging in shrivelled clusters, tanks of live crabs and flip-flopping fish, and spiky sea urchins.

The seafood restaurants on the upper floors of the main building allow you to buy something fresh downstairs, bring it up and have it prepared right there. The hoe (raw fish platter) is a choice move, as is grilled fish, skin crackling and caramelised, and piles of garlicky grilled prawns. Just don’t be too surprised if you spy a stray tentacle or, seemingly alive on someone else’s plate, make a futile wriggle towards freedom. The market certainly challenges Western sensibilities but provides an honest, unfiltered slice of Korean life.

Nampo-dong

This pedestrian-friendly maze near Jagalchi Fish Market and BIFF Square hums with energy. You’ll see English signs and photo menus alongside stalls that clearly cater to locals. But the trick is to look for Korean cues and follow them. Whether it’s fish cakes, mandu (dumplings), hotteok or tteokbokki, eat standing up, wipe your hands on napkins that appear from nowhere and keep moving.

Gukje Market

At Busan’s largest traditional market, the food section sits towards the southern end and packs more variety into a smaller space than feels possible. Fried mandu (dumplings), whole fish turning on open grills, tteokbokki in pots big enough to swim in, grilled sundae (blood sausage stuffed with glass noodles and vegetables that’s genuinely delicious), and vendors selling homemade kimchi by the kilogram to locals who wheel shopping trolleys through the aisles. The rule here, as always, is to follow the queue. A long line of Korean grandmothers beats a Michelin star any day.

Haeundae Traditional Market

Haeundae Market is a neighbourhood market rather than a tourist one, and it is better for it. Located a short walk from the beach, it runs daily, and the food section buzzes from late morning. Ajummas (aunties) grill mackerel, steam sticky rice cakes, ladle soups and hand out samples without making eye contact. There’s limited English, just quick transactions and food locals love. Come hungry, bring cash. The dwaeji gukbap stalls here are worth seeking out.

Bupyeong Kkangtong Market 

Bupyeong is Busan’s best night market, drawing a younger, more local crowd than the daytime tourist spots. Food stalls line the walkways selling everything from tornado potatoes and grilled corn to fusion-y things like cream cheese hotdogs and mango bingsu. Come after 7pm when it properly wakes up.

Choryang Milmyeon Street (Milmyeon Alley)

Not a market exactly, but it deserves mention. A short cluster of restaurants near Busan Station dedicated almost entirely to milmyeon. Locals have been eating here for decades. The restaurants open early and close when the noodles run out, which is generally before noon.

Millak Raw Fish Town

Jagalchi Fish Market is not the only spot where seafood takes centre stage. Millak Raw Fish Town is a waterfront strip devoted almost entirely to sashimi. Dozens of restaurants serve similar menus at similar prices, and staff will enthusiastically try to steer you inside. The trick is not to agonise over which one. Watch where local families settle in, look for restaurants with fish tanks that are well maintained, and sit down. Order a mixed platter and eat while the boats go past.

Convenience Stores

Photo by Polina Kneis on Unsplash

Convenience stores deserve their own moment. Korean convenience stores – GS25, CU, 7-Eleven and Emart24 are the main chains – aren’t emergency stops; they’re part of the food culture with hot food, cold food, self-serve coffee, microwaves, hot water dispensers and little plastic tables out front where locals eat full meals without any self-consciousness whatsoever.

Pop in and try some local faves. Samgak kimbap (triangular rice parcels wrapped in seaweed) is the gateway item. The outer packaging is engineered so you peel it in three steps without the seaweed touching the rice until the last second, keeping everything crisp. Fillings range from tuna mayo and spicy pork to kimchi and bulgogi, and they will become breakfast, snack and even dinner when you’re fading after a long day of touristing.

Next to the register you’ll find a rotating heated stand of hot and fried things on sticks. Fish cake skewers (essentially a cheaper version of what you’d pay three times as much for at a market stall), corn dogs stuffed with cheese or sausage, and tteok (rice cake) in various formats. And all good when you’re in need of a sneaky snack.

The selection of instant noodles will be enormous and overwhelming. Whatever you select, the store will provide hot water, a fork and somewhere to sit. Popular choices include Shin Ramyun (classic spicy and deeply savoury) and Jjajang cup noodles (a black bean paste version of instant noodles that offers a different eating experience entirely), but look for Buldak Bokkeum Myeon. Eye-wateringly spicy, they’ve quietly crossed over into a full Western moment, with supermarket shelves in the US, UK and Australia now stocking them. In fact, they’ve become one of those rare exports that travels not because it’s been softened for foreign palates, but precisely because it hasn’t. It’s worth noting that most GS25s have a self-serve soft-serve ice cream machine near the entrance. You may need it.

The other option to soothe your fiery face after eating Buldak is Sikhye, a lightly sweet, slightly fizzy traditional rice drink served cold in a can that is cleansing and refreshing.

Other popular convenience store treats are egg sandwiches made from thick white bread and stuffed with a generous egg mayo filling, sometimes with sweetcorn or cucumber. They are cheap and oddly satisfying at any hour.

Sweet, salty and slightly addictive honey butter chips, a snack that caused genuine supply shortages when it launched and people were reselling bags online for multiples of the retail price. The hype has settled, but the chips remain popular.

And grab a banana milk (a squat yellow carton of improbably sweet banana-flavoured milk) because it is worth trying at least once, if only to understand why Koreans are nostalgic about it.

K-BBQ: How to Do It Right

© Aleney de Winter

Korean BBQ is joyfully unavoidable in Busan, and unlike a lot of cities, it doesn’t cluster in one neighbourhood and call it a night. You’ll find it everywhere, from the packed side streets of Seomyeon and the beachfront restaurant strips of Haeundae to the lively bar district of Gwangalli and the younger, louder eating scene around Kyungsung University and Nampo-dong. Wherever you are in the city, a grill is probably within a five-minute walk.

This is partly a blessing and partly a problem. Because K-BBQ is so abundant and so uniform in presentation, every restaurant looks broadly the same from the outside, and it’s tempting to either overthink it or wander in somewhere mediocre out of sheer decision fatigue. The better move is to wander, watch and follow the locals. If there’s a queue of Korean families or office workers, get in it.

Seomyeon is the late-night BBQ heartland. It is dense with restaurants that stay open into the small hours, fuelled by office workers, university students and the kind of sustained group eating that only soju makes possible. It’s loud, it’s fun and the energy is hard to replicate elsewhere.

Haeundae draws a slightly more mixed crowd of locals and tourists, and the restaurants here tend to be a little more polished… and a little more expensive. It’s worth it for the setting because eating grilled pork belly a street back from a beach is never a bad idea.

Gwangalli has the coolest atmosphere, especially at night when the bridge lights up across the water. The BBQ crowd here tends to skew younger, and the strips around the beach are good for a long, unhurried evening.

Kyungsung-Bugyeong (the university area) is the place you go when you want quantity, low prices and the kind of cheerful chaos that only comes with a student-dense neighbourhood.

Wherever you land, the experience follows a reliable rhythm. A tabletop grill and banchan (side dishes) cover every available surface. Kimchi comes in multiple forms, and there will be pickled vegetables, small salads and things you won’t be able to identify but should eat anyway. Then comes the meat. Thin slices of pork belly and/or marinated beef cook in minutes on the tabletop grill and are wrapped in perilla leaves with a smear of doenjang (fermented soybean paste), ready to be eaten in quick, happy bursts. Order the samgyeopsal (pork belly) and the galbi (short rib). And don’t be afraid to ask for assistance if it’s your first time. Servers commonly cook the meat for you in Busan, more so than in Seoul,

Must-try Busan restaurants

Dondwaeji, Busan. Photo by Rina Kemppainen on Unsplash

Most food in Busan is better when you find it by instinct… wandering, following smells and trusting queues. But there are some restaurants that have earned their reputation and should absolutely be on your list.

Dondwaeji (Myeongdong)

A Jung-gu favourite that has earned a following among both locals and foreign tourists, Dondwaeji keeps its focus on one thing: grilled strip loin. Simple, satisfying, and popular for good reason.

Chamsuri Gopchang (Seomyeon)
Grilled gopchang (small intestine) cooked over charcoal, basted repeatedly until caramelised and slightly crisp at the edges. Confronting for the uninitiated and completely addictive for everyone else, this is the kind of place that has regulars who have eaten the same meal here every week for twenty years.

Chef Gon (Jung-gu)

Tucked down an alley near Jagalchi Market, this is a Michelin-listed counter restaurant run by a former hotel chef. Every morning he goes to the market and buys what looks good; that becomes the day’s menu. The result is a seafood-led tasting course that changes constantly, cooked in front of you. Book well ahead. Closed Mondays.

Samojeong (Seomyeon)

An institution famous for its samgyetang (whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, garlic and ginseng, simmered until the broth turns silky and restorative). What sets Samojeong apart is that theirs often comes with abalone, which sounds extravagant until you taste how it deepens the broth.

Palette (Yongho-dong)

One of the few Michelin-starred restaurants in Busan, Chef Jaehoon Kim’s French-influenced tasting menu uses local and seasonal Korean ingredients in ways that feel inevitable rather than clever. Not cheap or casual, but if you want one high-end meal in the city, this is the one to book.

Halmae Gaya Milmyeon (Seomyeon)

Often cited as serving Busan’s finest milmyeon, it’s been dishing it up so since the 1980s. The broth is clear, cold and precise, but the queues are long. We recommend arriving slightly before opening.

Cooking classes in Busan

Bapsan cooking class in Busan. © Aleney de Winter

If you want to really understand Korean food, from how it’s made and why it tastes the way it does to what it means in the context of Korean culture, book a cooking class. Not as a box-ticking activity, but as the thing that ties the whole trip together.

Busan has plenty of options, but we genuinely loved Bapsang with Min. In our session we made bibimbap with bulgogi (a rice bowl topped with marinated beef and a rainbow of vegetables), haemul pajeon (addictive crispy seafood and spring onion pancakes) and miyeok guk (a mild, nourishing seaweed soup).

You’ll leave with a folder of recipes you’ll actually use, a much clearer sense of what’s been in your bowl all week, and, if our experience is anything to go by, already planning which dish to cook first when you get home.

Take a culinary tour of Korea

An InsideAsia Tours local guide takes the guesswork out of eating in markets and beyond. © Aleney de Winter

InsideAsia Tours’ Culinary Korea itinerary is one of the best ways to navigate the country’s food scene, particularly for first-timers who don’t want to miss things through lack of local knowledge. The 13-day fully customisable tour covers Seoul, Busan, Jeonju, Yeosu and Jeju Island, with local guides who know where to eat in each city, and more importantly, what to order.

The difference between a good meal and a great one in Korea is often just knowing which stall on which street to go to, and that kind of knowledge is hard to come by without help.

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