Gyeongju

Today we visited several sites of the ancient Silla dynasty. To get to the first one was a 3 hour drive from Jongju to Gyeongju. Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom for over 1000 years. Our first stop was the birth place of the founding king of Silla, Bak Hyeokgeose. There's nothing there now but a field with a monument stone marking the spot. We then went to the Five Tombs Complex . Visitors aren't allowed in the mounds, but Dr. Petersen explained how the temple around the mounds was actually built during the later Joseon period, using Confucian principles. The site also contains a monument house commemorating the first queen of Silla, Alyong. It’s monsoon season in Korea so the rain made today difficult most of our field trips were outside. In between sites we stopped for another traditional Korean lunch. I've decided that my diet while I'm here will basically consist of seaweed soup & kimchi, or cabbage & rice mixed with bean paste.

After lunch we went to the Heavenly Horse Tomb which is a tomb of middle Silla Kingdom. It isn't known who was buried in the tombs, but historians do know that it was pre -Buddhist. We later went to the Gyeongju National Museum, where our charming Korean guide "Cookie" told us all about Silla and the artifacts of the period. We finished up the day at Bunhwangsa where we saw a stone pagoda made to look like brick. It was built in 634 during the Silla dynasty. It's surrounded by hundreds of beautiful paper lanterns on which people have hung blessings.

While there we walked over to the site of a former Hwangnyongsa temple. It once contained a nine story pagoda, but it was burned down during the Mongol invasion.