The Spirit of Silla

Unfortunately, before booking our trip to Korea, I didn’t realize that this was the busiest holiday week of the year for Koreans – coinciding with the Chuseok holiday. This means that it’s generally quite difficult to move around the country as most of the trains and flights are booked up in advance by Koreans. I’d originally booked us into Jeju island where I was able to find flights and hotels for the last few days of our stay, but a few weeks before the trip I managed to get us the last seats on some trains to the southern city of Gyeongju that worked perfectly! So here we are at Seoul Station, the primary hub of the Korean rail network.

It was a comfortable 2 hour ride on the KTX high speed train. Snack boxes were given out with a graphic of the historical Cheomseongdae Observatory on the package, as Gyeongju is hosting the APEC 2025 summit at the end of October.

There hadn’t been much selection for available hotel rooms due to the relative last minute booking, so we ended up at a place in a formerly seedy/party area full of bars. It was just fine though and was not noisy at night.

Plenty of history everywhere – it really is an open air museum in Gyeongju!

Two of the tombs have been reconstructed or improved: one of them so you can see the construction of the tombs.

And another containing historical artifacts inside a much more original form of the tomb.

It was really beautiful park and would warrant a second visit the following day when the skies were sunny and blue.

This “instagrammable” spot had a 15 minute line to take a photo.

As part of the pre-APEC festivities, there were a number of other festivals and events, such as the Silla Cultural Festival in the parks surrounding the tombs.

A tomb that caught my eye in one of the museum videos was Tomb of King Seongdeok, a bit out of town and guarded by some stone statues. We basically had the place to ourselves. But we discovered why, as the bus service can be spotty at times – we had to wait 40 minutes for the bus back to the city after our visit.

We visited the Woljeonggyo Bridge just before sunset.

One of the tips from Dawn’s trip in the spring was to visit Judon, a Korean BBQ restaurant in town. We visited a few BBQ places on our trip but this one was the best!

Many of Gyeongju’s historical sights and landmarks are beautifully illuminated after dark.

Such as the Cheomseongdae Observatory.

The ruins of the Wolseong Fortress moat.

Traditional Hanbok style shops in Hwangnidan-gil, one of the main shopping streets of Gyeongju.

The spectacularly lit Woljeonggyo Bridge – couldn’t get the classic shot due to this stage set up in front for the nightly performances this weekend, but it was still gorgeous.

And finally, Donggung Palace & Wolji Pond – simply amazing.

Our final day in Gyeongju was a clear, very warm (30 degrees) early fall day, and we were out for almost all of it. First, we visited the 1250 year old Bulguksa Temple, a Buddhist temple complex in the mountains outside of town.

It was so nice to get here relatively early in the morning while it wasn’t too packed.

It’s not just one building – there were many different halls in the complex, a fully working temple where prayer sessions were taking place in some of the halls (no pictures, please!)

Seeing the Buddhist swastika again for the first time since Bali reminded me how this symbol of positivity was adopted by the Nazis and took on an entirely different meaning. Buddhist swastikas can face both left and right and mean different things; the Nazi swastika faced only right.

One more visit to the tombs again on this gorgeous afternoon.

And also over to the observatory – the pink muhly grass was shimmering in the early evening sun.

Interestingly, there were numerous public air quality display monitors everywhere in Korea, both on the street and indoors like in metro stations in Seoul. I guess the air quality must get pretty bad at times.

We said farewell to our closest convenience store in Gyeongju – Nice to CU!

Another curious feature of Korea – I didn’t visit a single coffee shop where ordering was NOT from a kiosk. Even this one across the street from our hotel had a kiosk ordering system and I’m pretty sure it was the same person working there morning, noon, and night every day so it’s not like it was a chain.

Our final morning in Gyeongju was gloomy, but that was OK. Here’s a look at a newer suburban part of Gyeongju by the railway station. So many of the cities that we passed through on the train contained these dense forests of 30-50 floor apartment towers.

Back at Gyeongju Station for the return to Seoul on the KTX.

The following 24 hours was in Seoul, caught up in the previous post – so here we are heading back home after that. Another great trip!

Especially to finish it off with this amazing view of the Columbia Icefield in our Canadian Rockies at the end!