2 Days in Gyeong-ju


When I returned from the 6th grade field trip that Friday, my friends notified my of their sudden plan to take a trip to Gyeong-ju for 2 days that weekend. We left Saturday morning and returned Sunday night. Gyeong-ju is a very old city famous for many different traditional histories and cultural sites in Korea. The first we saw as we were walking from the bus to our hostel: tombs.


These giant mound of dirt are actually tombs built for the royal family. As we were arriving, there was some sort of procession or parade going on. We still don't know what exactly was happening, but they seemed very excited to see a group of foreigners watching them and taking pictures. Ashley and I were even given 2 little Korean flags to wave with them.








The town is self was packed with all sorts of things and very busy. I think the wires that ran everywhere were a sign of the age of the town, because I haven't seen those many other places in Korea, but it reminded me a lot of Japan. Our hostel was very nice and relaxed. When we arrived, no one was there, but a note had been left for us.





Our first stop of the day was Bulguksa temple, one of the most famous in Korea. On the way up were tons of stands from which you could buy little souvenirs. It was here I made my first tourist-y purchase and bought some tower figurines and a little bird whistle.



Seven of our group of eight went to Gyeong-ju that weekend. Jaryt didn't go because he had already been there before, but the rest of us were up for the adventure.



entering Bulguksa Temple

Bulguksa

All temples have these fresh, pure water springs from which people can drink water.


One of the reasons that Bulguksa is so famous is that is has TWO towers instead of they typical one. This one is Dabotap. The other, Seokgatap was under restoration at the time.





Another thing you'll find at every temple, or most places in Korea that are visited by many natives for that matter are these stacks of stones. It's incredible to look at the sheer number of them surrounding the area, and it's always expected that you add one or two stones while you're there.





After dinner and the sunset, we were lucky enough to stumble upon a lantern festival on our way to see the observatory and Anapji pond.



This observatory is the oldest in all of Asia.


After the observatory, we went to Anapji pond, a very famous temple, pond and garden area in Gyeong-ju. We heard that it was best viewed at night before coming, so that's how we planned our trip and we were not disappointed! The bright, full moon was rising just as we arrived and it proved for some great photos that still barely capture the beauty of the landscape.












That night we partied in the hostel while drinking lots of makgeolli (막걸리), a brand of which Gyeong-ju is famous for. Makgeolli is a wine made from rice that is a very common alcoholic drink in Korea. It is milky white in color and is traditionally drunk out of a metal bowl. When we awoke the next morning, we realized that the hostel owner had put all the empty bottles outside for us and made a comment about how 9 people drinking 12 bottles of makgeoli was a lot. We chose not to tell her that we had had another 6 bottles at the restaurant with dinner, too.


The last stop on our trip the following day was the museum. Here were got to walk along the timeline of Korea's history and read all about it, in addition to seeing lots of relics and artworks from their evolution over time.

All in all, it was a super fun and educational trip, but we were only able to see a fraction of the things that Gyeong-ju offers and we need to take another trip sometime to see the rest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more