We finally decided that Bulguksa Temple seemed to be the big tourist draw, so we figured out which bus to take and hopped on. The trip took about 30 minutes and dropped us off at the bottom of the hill that lead up to the temple. We made our way up the hill slowly (my dad has bad knees), passing many roadside souvenir stands, and paid a small admission fee (4,000 won each) to enter.
Referring to the picture above, we started at the bottom right corner, walked to the temple complex in the upper left, and eventually made our way out through the gate at the bottom left. The temple was very large and well-maintained, and enjoyable to explore. It did have some steep stairs at a few points, which were hard on Mom and Dad. Some highlights of the temple:
It was around 1 pm by the time we got back to the main road, so we decided to stop for lunch. I scouted out a restaurant while my parents rested, and was called to by a restaurant owner who promised an English menu. I checked it out and seemed promising (and I respected her go-getter attitude), so I brought my parents over and we had a good lunch. We ordered too much food, however - three main dishes and a green onion pancake to share - and at this point my mom and dad started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of food served at Korean restaurants. The food we ordered, rice for three, all the side dishes...the table was loaded with food, and from an American perspective it felt bad to leave so much behind.
After lunch, we worked out a plan to go to Seokguram Grotto, the site of a famous man-made Buddhist cave shrine. The grotto is on the mountain overlooking Bulguksa, so we took a bus that goes between Bulguksa and Seokguram, which took about 30 minutes. We paid another admission fee (4,000 won again) and then discovered that the grotto was not at the parking lot, but rather at the end of a long, winding trail. Considering the steep drops down the mountain, we were surprised that the trail didn't have any railings, but the path was nice and wide so it didn't feel dangerous.
We had a few disappointments when we arrived, however. The grotto was at the top of a steep flight of stairs, and after all the day's walking my parents were in no shape to climb them. They rested at the bottom while I went up, requesting pictures. Unfortunately, due to the delicate nature of the site, no pictures were allowed. It was very impressive, I have to say, and they got to see pictures and a video about it later. When I came back down we walked back to the parking lot and caught the bus down a few minutes later (lucky for us, seeing as how the bus comes once an hour). We then took a bus back to the bus terminal and spent a little while searching for a supermarket so that we could get stuff for dinner and breakfast. We had to ask someone at a nearby hotel, but we finally found one.
By that time we were too tired to want to figure out which bus would get us back to the hanok (and besides, we would have to walk up the hill), so we took a taxi. (As it turned out, a taxi to the hanok was only around 4,000 won, while a bus would have been 1,500 each, so taxis were cheaper and more convenient.) None of the taxis we took in Gyeongju had any idea where the hanok was, even after showing them the address in Korean, and this driver really made a mess of things. He followed a sign that lead him to a pair of streets too narrow for him to drive on. Instead of turning around and finding another way, he told us to get out and walk the rest of the way. We weren't very far away then, but we had groceries and were tired, so it was tough.
My phone ran out of batteries on the walk up, so the first thing I did was get out my new cable and plug it in. To my immense frustration, the cable didn't work at all and refused to charge. We'd found an English tourist map of the city at Bulguksa, so we had some information to go on, but we had to manage the whole next day without internet access, Google maps or translation apps. In other words, like traveling before smartphones!
