I’d been wondering if there would be any place on our Big Scram that I wouldn’t be eager to leave when the time came. That’s not to say our stops have been terrible, despite my complaining, er, tendency towards critical analysis. We’ve found real interest in each place. My haste to leave has been driven more by the excitement of what’s next. But I finally found the place where I was dragging my heels at departing: Gyeongju, South Korea.
Gyeongju translates to Congratulatory District. We were certainly congratulating ourselves on having chosen to go there. It was the capital of the Buddhist Silla kingdom from a few years b.c.e. to about 1000 a.d. and it’s thought to have been the 4th largest city in the world at that time. It was a major stop on the Silk Road. Gyeongju is chock-a-block with UNESCO world heritage sites and it’s just a damned pleasant place be.
Case in point: the Daereungwon Tomb Complex, my new favorite funerary monuments. These are the final resting places of the Silla kingdom’s royalty. I love how cheerful they are and how they fit in to the overall topography.
Most of the main sights are clustered together right in town, easily walkable. This is an enormous field of lotus, past its prime.
The 7th century astronomical observatory, Cheomseongdae.
A short way out of town, Bulguksa temple claims to be from the 6th century. Like many temples, it has been destroyed, rebuilt, and restored throughout the centuries, leaving me with so many questions about the meaning of authenticity.
The Woljeonggyo Bridge: built, burnt, rebuilt.
We made it a point to stay in a Hanok, a traditional style inn,
where you sleep on mats on the floor.
The major draw of this Hanok is that it includes a sitting room across the courtyard, complete with 3 lovely kitties. It is indeed why we chose this one!
It rained buckets while we were there, but we didn’t care. It was 30 degrees cooler than Busan, a huge relief. We didn’t mind being half wet, we walked around grinning like idiots under our umbrellas.
We were there 4 days and would have happily stayed another week (perhaps not sleeping on the floor, however). Alas, there was the matter of a credit card we lost in Japan. A new one was winging its way to us in Seoul and we needed to intersect with it. And that, my friends, is a travel saga for another day.
Cheers,
Maer
The Let's Get Lost Game 