Tim leaves at 5:30 to do something. When writing this blog after a long day, he has to look at his pictures to remember where he started, which was at the Observatory. Then he visited some spots on the B list: the old city walls, the Tomb of General Kim Yusin and some royal tombs in the forest next to the Namsan mountains and our Hanok.
We eat breakfast at 7:30, Tim gets back at 7:45. We jump on the trampoline together before leaving for Bulguksa Temple, UNESCO World Heritage and #1 Historic and Scenic sight of South Korea. It is considered the essence of Silla culture, and 1300 years old (but rebuild after the Japanese invasion and again in the 70’s…).
It’s starting to rain when we park. We hop from canapé to corridor to avoid most of the rain. The surrounding garden is as beautiful as the complex that consists of different buildings and decorated with thousands colourful lanterns.
When we exit the garden, it stops raining so we also visit the next door park which is famous for its Sakura viewing. Unlike elsewhere in Korea, here much of the blossom is still on the trees and we take unabashedly many selfies and pictures around the trees.
Next on our list is Seokguram Grotto, a stone cave temple built by digging stones in the mountain. It’s not raining, but we’re in the cloud now, and it’s very foggy. We donate 1000 won to rimg the temple bell. We’re not allowed to take pictures inside of the cave, unfortunately, because it’s beautiful and very well preserved. In the center of the cave sits a giant Buddha and the surrounding walls are decorated with guardians and spirits.
It’s lunch time, but all places for lunch seem to be closed, so Tim drones the Tomb of Munmu of Silla in the sea instead. Munmu of Silla unified the three kingdoms of Korea and died in 681. It is the only underwater tomb in the world. It looks like normal rocks from a distance, but from above you can see the stone that covers the tomb. Legend claims that he wanted to be buried in the sea so that he could rise and defeat a future Japanese invasion.
Still looking for lunch, we take a wrong turn and are driving on into a nuclear power station. We get a bit nervous by all the armed guards at the gate and on lookout towers. So when looking for a way out, we take two more wrong turns and seem to be stuck around the power plant before finding a way around.
Unfortunately, neither inside nor outside of the power plant seems to be a suitable lunch for us. We can only find raw fish and closed restaurants. So we buy some lunch at the 7-eleven and eat it in the car. After lunch we go for a short walk on the beach, as the children love the sea and want to experience it every time we’re close to it.
Fully fed, we visit the nearby 1500 year old Golgulsa Temple. It houses many stone carved Buddha statutes, and is also famous for maintaining the tradition of Korean Buddhism’s practice of Seonmudo. We’re lucky, because we arrive exactly on the moment of the start of the daily Seonmudo performance, which seems to be a mix between slow yoga and teakwando. Zeno is more interested in all the shoes and participants then the performance, so unfortunately Olga has to escape after 5 minutes to let Zeno run around the temple and enable the other participants to get engaged in the performance.
When it’s finished, the sky is also blue for the first time in two days, so we make our way up to the 3 meter high sitting Buddha, carved in the mountain and overlooking the water tomb of Munmu of Silla in the distance.
Tim suggests to go to an open air museum, but Olga interferes: it’s already 16:30, time to go home. We simply cannot see it all. We spent the afternoon jumping on the trampoline, finishing the home cooked noodle dish of yesterday, colouring and reading books.
Since the weather has cleared, it looks to be a nice sunset so Tim sets out for another round of photos. He shoots all the places we have already visited and buys a ticket for the Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond since every famous photo of it is taken at night, so Tim wants to get the same. On his way back he takes a final look at the well lit tumuli as he sees a full moon above the tombs. This opportunity can’t be missed, so he takes some more photos and since he’s at it he pops out the drone to get some aerial night shots too.
It was a long, but again a very nice day.
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