Day 45

Still in Gyeongju!  Last day, I promise.

After the Teddy Bear Museum on Tuesday, we walked to Bunghwasa temple, one of the seven greatest buddhist temples of Silla.  It was built in 634CE.  It was a nice little temple, but I wouldn't venture to say it was a must-do in Gyeongju.

Pretty, especially in autumn.

Not unimpressive, but I get the feeling it used to be much bigger.  I'm surprised that it hasn't been rebuilt to its original size, but also glad.  The recreations get a little trite after a while.

Traditional Korean self-portrait.

Door guardians, with a creeper inside.

Liking this stone lion in the front.  I don't understand why lions are so popular here.  Tigers I'd understand, but lions?
How did they even know lions existed back then?

Dragon?  Fish?  Not sure.

Inside the reconstructed temple at Bunghwasa;

Nice Buddha!

Some old art on the side of the temple:

It's cool to see older art!

Love the snowy mountains!

Not sure what this stone structure was for, but it's supported by a turtle, so that's cool.

Kinda hard to see the turtle here.

After Bunghwasa we went back into town for dinner.  Juan has a real knack for picking excellent restaurants.

Traditional Korean art.

This is a seafood pancake, or haemul pajeon.  It's DELICIOUS.
Haemul ("hey-mool") means seafood, and pajeon ("pah-john") means pancake.

The milky white stuff in the little copper cup is rice water, it's gross.
The bigger cups are full of makkoli, Korean rice beer-type alcohol.

Bulgogi!  So good!

Wednesday was our last day!  We booked a train to Seoul that left at 1:30, so I got up early and went to General Yu Shin's tomb.  It was about an hour-long walk because no buses went there, which should have been my first tip-off that this place was definitely not worth going to.

A fairly standard tomb.

At least I saw a nice butterfly!

Juan had already left, so Eric and I had lunch at a Japanese ramen place next to the smaller tumuli park.  Shockingly, it was one of the best meals I've had in Korea.  The meat was heavenly, slow-cooked pork that fell apart in your mouth.  I highly recommend it to anyone going to Gyeongju.

One last tumulus.  This one was my favorite because of the cool trees.

We almost missed our train because it turned out that the train left from a different station, about 30 minutes away by bus.  We cut it close, but made it.  (Heads-up to anyone visiting Gyeongju, leave time for that bus!)

One last tumulus at the train station.  Not sure why it has the opening.  It's like a coffin with a doggy-door.

Cute kids!  The boys has a Bumblebee (Transformers) toy and the girl kept using random adorable English words.

This dude filmed the train coming in.

We didn't have seats on the train, so we joined this posse of floor-dwellers.

And that's it from Gyeongju!  It was an excellent trip and I highly recommend this city to anyone visiting Korea.  A lot of tourists come and only see Seoul, and while Seoul is cool and big, it's hardly representative of the whole of Korea.  Gyeongju is smaller, older, and slower-paced.

Upcoming posts: Itaewon (the foreign sector of Seoul), Costco, and Korean alcohols.  Look forward to it!  :)


Cheers,

-애쉬톤 / Ashton