Gyeongju, Day 1 - The Drive South

 Our private tour guide was kind enough to pick us up near our hotel in Seoul, and from there, we drove south toward Gyeongju via rather winding seaside roads. (No complaints!)

We began rather early in the morning, with a nice view of the city of Seoul from an overlooking hill:

I'm not sure if the haze comes from Seoul itself or if it's blown over from China. Neither would surprise me. 

Anyway, the guide told us about the mountain we were driving past--and my memory is extremely hazy. But I'll do my best to remember what he said. 

I'm fairly sure he said the mountain was called Tiger Mountain, or something similar, and that the tiger used to be the national animal of Korea, but that tigers have all been hunted to extinction. (Was it tiger, or was it bear? I think it was tiger...) Anyway, pictures:

I think he also said--although, this may have been somewhere else--that if you go over that mountain, you'll be extremely close to the DMZ and North Korea. 

 Something else he told us that sticks in my memory is this: because Seoul is so close to the North Korean border--here's a map, for reference:

Source

--that buildings over a certain height in Seoul need to have anti-aircraft weapons installed on the roofs!

Anyway, we drove from Seoul east until we reached the Sea of Japan, and then we turned south and drove along the coast. The beautiful, beautiful coast. 

After seeing some of the beaches, the guide took us through a fish market, selling all kinds of things I never would have thought of buying: 

These look to me like sole or stingrays

I think this was...mackerel? 

This was the sign. 

This was what most of the ground looked like: it was either wet concrete, or a boardwalk. Very, very coastal. 

The ones that really caught my attention were these things, which I promptly snapped pictures of and sent to random people with absolutely no context:

Some of my Korean third graders once told me that they like to eat the bones. 

After having not been near the ocean for a long time, wandering around the coastal town was such a nice change! 

And of course, there's something extremely special about standing and looking at the horizon over the ocean:

If I remember correctly, this is where the guide said that they were worried about North Korean submarines landing spies secretly. 

Not that this is a great picture, but do you see the green paint at the very top of this picture? Green paint on a building traditionally meant that the building was commissioned by the royal palace (as per our guide, anyway). 

Isn't that just beautiful? 

And now for the picture that I know will irritate one of my former students:

I can't rotate it. I also can't find the original picture without my scribbles on it. 

The guide told us that was whale meat. (It will irritate my student because he was very surprised to hear that you can eat whale meat in South Korea..)

Anyway, after this, we drove to the city of Gyeongju, and the guide took us straight to our hotel. Normally I don't do this for hotels, but I'm going to name-drop this hotel: Gyeongju Jang Inn. I can't find it now, but it was on Booking.com. For a mere $23 per night, we had a very nice, private, roomy, heated room with a fridge, a private bathroom, and towels included. It was a short distance from a nearby convenience store and right across the street from the Silla royal tombs! The innkeeper was extremely kind and even upgraded us to a better room for free. I sincerely hope he hasn't gone out of business...

Anyway, the stuff that really had my attention was on the second day of the tour...

Gyeongju

 After finishing Seoul, I insisted we go to another city--Gyeongju, which is south along the Korean peninsula. 

Back in Korean history, from 57 BC-668 AD, there used to be three kingdoms on the Korean peninsula--Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. (For context, this was from the middle of the Han Dynasty to about the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in China; or, in Europe, about the time of Julius Caesar to sometime after Muhammed's death.) If you look at the map here, you will see that Guguryeo is the largest kingdom by land (it even controlled Shenyang); however, the strongest of these kingdoms was Silla (my Korean students told me it's because they were protected by mountains on their landward border, but had access to Japan, so they could make alliances, by sea. Thank you, Austin and Aiden!). Gyeongju was the capital city of Silla, and it was where the nobles of Silla were buried. 

The reason I insisted on visiting Gyeongju is that I learned all about that when I was in sixth grade and we had to do a country report. I did my report on South Korea, and I vividly remember learning about Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo. (I still can't say Goguryeo, but I learned about it!) What I especially remembered was learning about Queen Sondok, a queen of Silla who loved stargazing. So I was naturally eager to see this place in real life!

My friend and I had a private tour guide who would take us south along the coast towards Gyeongju, and we would see many things along the way. I'm going to create separate posts for all of those, and try my best not to go too overboard with all the beautiful scenery pictures. Stay tuned! 

The Meerkat Cafe!

 I cannot for the life of me remember what order everything in Seoul happened in. I think this came shortly after the trip up N Tower, but I don't remember for sure.

Anyway, my dear friend Adrienne loves small, furry critters. While we have petting zoos in America, in Asia, they have animal cafes, and Adrienne really wanted to go to one of them. (Not that I minded, either.) The one in Seoul we went to--a meerkat cafe!

For those of you who've never been, an animal cafe is similar to a petting zoo, but it's all inside, much more comfortable for you, and full of animals that petting zoos probably wouldn't let you hold. I've read that some of them are called animal cruelty, but for this one, I'm pretty sure the animals couldn't possibly survive in the wild (you'll see the raccoon, for example). I don't recall any of these animals being especially friendly unless you had food, but they were adorable and not afraid of people. 

Now, I'd never seen a meerkat up close before, but I have to say--as cute as they can be...

...they can also be rather vicious! 

And then be cute again. 

Now, this particular place had more than just meerkats. It had a tailless raccoon, rock hyrax (which I had never heard of before) and a wallaby, among other adorable animals. 

That's my hand. 

I have completely forgotten what the mini-cheetah-thing is.

He liked to bounce up and down. Here, I think he's begging me for a treat. 

This animal on my knee is the rock hyrax. 

This next picture is very blurry, but it makes sense if you know the backstory. I had run out of treats, so the rock hyrax apparently decided to find someone else. As you can see in that last picture, he prepared to hop off my knee. Then, the wallaby hopped by and stopped right in front of me. The hyrax decided that his best course of action was to hop from my knee onto the wallaby's back! 

As you can see, the wallaby was a little startled. 

My friend was definitely the animals' favorite--she got them onto her lap without any treats in her hand. But it's a sweet way to spend an afternoon, so if you're ever in South Korea or Japan, definitely check the area and see if there's anything like this near you. 

Seoul, Day 2 - The Hike Up the Hill

My friend Adrienne watches some TV or YouTube series that involves the members exploring South Korea. One of the things they did was take a cable car up a hill to N Seoul Tower. 

N Seoul Tower is built on a massive hill looking over the city, so in order to get there, we first needed to walk up the hill toward the cable cars.

On the way, we saw this, which made me giggle and cringe all at once: 

I've had a few experiences with things similar to this. 

Anyway, after that, we made it to the cable car and stood in a surprisingly quick line. A view from the car:

Mountain!

Once we got off the cable car, we still had more walking to do. It was winter, so the trees had no leaves, but they were still picturesque and pleasant:

This next part definitely left an impression on my memory.

It's called the Love Locks, and it's a viewing deck with fences and posts and whatnot. Attacked to these fences and posts are thousands of locks:

Why locks? Well, you see, what happens is this: a Korean couple writes their names on two locks. Then they lock those two locks together and attach them to the fences or posts here. It's a symbol of love lasting forever. 

Anyway, I don't remember what these things are, and I haven't been able to figure out from reading online, but I'm going to take a guess that they are made for smoke signals. The mountain is quite high, after all, so smoke from those funnels would be visible from most of the city. 

Looking inside

Looking up

 After this... it was on to the tower!