Gyeongju

Lately, I've been trying to get out of Seoul for the weekends. See Korea. Avoid hangovers etc.

So last weekend a couple of my coworkers, some friends, and I took the KTX (the Korean high-speed train) all the way south to Gyeongju to see the city that Koreans consistently insist is the most beautiful place in all of Korea.

My boss helped us reserve the tickets, and as it turns out, if you get the four-person tables it is way way cheaper. Solid deal. Since we had sweet tables, we decided to make it even more obvious to everyone that we were American by having a McDonalds dinner and being as loud as possible on the way.

Heidi, Tadhg, Devon and Will.

Jon, Becky, and I.

We arrived pretty late at night (these pictures are stolen from Devon's iPhone and are from the next day) so the owners of the pension we were staying at offered to pick us up at the KTX station, because apparently their home is hard for taxi drivers to find.

The house was lovely out of control.

The lovely man, Mr. Jeong, who owned the house, built the whole thing by himself over the course of seven years and when we asked how, his response was, "The internet is very good."

There were two dogs, maybe named John and Alfie. Or maybe with Korean names that sound similar to John and Alfie. Alfie, the big one, was less than friendly despite our peace offerings of ham. John was very friendly by the end and even walked us all the way to the busstop in the mornings.

The interior of the house was lovely exposed log and terracotta and had a very ski-lodge feel to it.

With a Korean twist.

It was a bit of a hike to the busstop at the end of the lane...and we spent a lot of time sitting here wondering if we'd missed the fairly infrequent bus.

After quite a while on busses we arrived at Gyeonju's most famous site, Bulguksa Temple. We lucked out and had lovely weather despite a forecast of rain.

Jon, Becky, and I.

The scenery was lovely as well.

Here is the entrance to the temple area. Photo ops galore!

Me.

The group minus Heidi.

The Buddha in the main Buddha Hall.

Lotus lanterns and traditional Korean temple coloring.

Devon.

A study-abroad-brochure worthy photo of Tadhg (presumably) explaining the historical importance of this traditional Korean arch to Heidi.

Becky loves some traditional Korean architecture.

Bonsai!

This is special because of something about the number of lotus blossom carved on each of its tiers.

Meditative rock stacks.

I'm clearly really enjoying all of the cultural exposure.

Devon and some more Korean architecture!

It was really really pretty.

친구s!

Jon and Becky love it!

Then we hiked 4 kilometers up the mountain to check out Seokguram Grotto. The view was pretty cool but the visibility wasn't great.

You could ring this bell for mercy.

Heidi and I.

Lanterns!

Me with lanterns!

More lanterns!

This is the Grotto part. Inside was a really cool old statue of Buddha but you couldn't take pictures.

Then we headed back to our pension, because Mr. Jeong had promised to help us prepare a barbecue. Will and Mr. Jeong manned the grill.

Guess which half of the grill I was responsible for. All of the vegetables were organic and grown in Mr. Jeong's garden!!! He was the best.

After dinner, he played us some tunes on his classical guitar. He plays with an ensemble in Gyeongju seems really talented. At any rate, it was really pleasant.

John seems terrified in this photo. He was super cute, though.

Gyeongju was also full of burial mounds (as it turns out most of the Korean countryside is) and since we didn't get a chance to see any of the ones of the famous people buried there, I took this photo walking down the hill to the bus from our pension.

I miss gardens!

And really just nature in general.

All-in-all an amazing trip.