Lunar’s New Year Part 2 (Gyeongju)
After Daejeon we went to Gyeongju. It’s sort of a cultural center of Korea. There was a lot of interesting things to see and do in the city. Gyeongju is where the Shilla dynasty flourished up until around 1000AD. Today the city is one of Korea’s big cultural attractions.
We saw some tombs which look like gigantic mounds. There are alot of these around the city in various parks. Seen in the picture here is a royal tomb. They start constructing a tomb for someone ONLY after they have died so I guess you’d be pretty popular if someone would take the trouble to build one this large. The tombs aren’t just piles of dirt either. They have an inner chamber which is covered in rocks The dirt layer only a meter thick.
We also went to an amusement park and tried out a drop zone ride. I have to confess i am not a fan of freefall. The picture here is K and Sis on a centrifuge type of ride. The crossed fingers mean that K doesn’t like it. We also went into a haunted house which wasn’t really that scary to us but some poor little kid ahead of us was completely freaked out and bawling. I think his parents got him out quickly.
This temple is called Bulgoksa. It’s a beautiful spot and has been restored quite nicely. There were a lot of interesting buildings in here and also a nice gift shop where we picked up some nice souvenirs. I won’t go into detail on what we got because I could wind up spoiling surprises. On our last day in the city we visited the Gyeongju museum and the Anajpi pond. The museum was very nice, but for me the pond was the highlight of the final day. It was actually man made sometime around the year 674. It was in disrepair for centuries following the fall of the Shilla Dynasty. The Korean government restored the pond and recovered artifacts which are now on display in the Gyeongju Museum. The pond has a lot of over-sized goldfish. They get pretty fat living off the crumbs from anyone who passes by. We finished the day looking for the famous ‘soup to cure a hangover’ street. Sadly we never found it, but we did get some of the famous gyeongju bread. Maybe you need to be hungover to find that street. We got the train back to Daejeon around 6pm. Around 8:30 we were back home.