Kyongju

Now that Spring is officially here, we decided to break out of the Seoul bubble and go exploring in Korea. Last weekend a group of us went down to a city called Kyongju in the southeast portion of the country. We left on a 6am bus, arrived about 4 hours later, and then rented bikes and spent the day exploring the area and riding to our hostel. We thought it was going to be a nice afternoon stroll through town… but it turned out to be a 10 mile uphill journey! It was definitely the most intense bike excursion I’ve had in a longgg time (maybe ever? Which is pathetic.) We were SO relieved when we finally arrived, I practically collapsed onto the wood floor in our hostel room. Even though it was a rough day, it was also filled with beautiful scenery, millions of cherry blossoms, and great company.

The next day we went to Bulgoksa Temple, the head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism (thank you wikipedia). It was a really cool compound full of beautiful traditional Korean architecture and giant Buddha statues. We also took a long windy bus ride and a short, cold hike up a mountain to Seokguram Grotto, which includes a giant Buddha sculpture on top of the mountain. It was built around 750AD, so it is quite old. Buddhism is such a beautiful religion; it’s really cool to see it up close here in Asia.

     Luckily we had decided to take the train back to the main town to catch the bus, because there is no way we would have survived the journey a 2nd time. I thought I was fine… until I sat on the bike and almost cried because I was so sore. Even just the couple mile trek from the hostel to the train station nearly killed us. I guess I won’t be signing up for the Tour de France anytime soon (my dreams have been dashed!). It was a short 2 day trip, but a perfect intro to set the pace for the rest of Spring. I love Seoul, but it was really nice to get out and see some countryside. Turns out that once you get past all the giant high rise apartments, Korea is a really beautiful country.