On day two, we headed out to see sights that were just outside of the city. There are quite a few cultural things to do and see around the city itself, so choosing was a bit hard, but our book steered us to Bulguksa and Seokguram grotto, and to Bomun lake.
These places are only reachable by bus. Buses in foreign countries and I are not friends. They break down, I catch a terrible illness when I am to ride one, we never reach our destination, I am unable to catch the bus, it encourages me to kill all my friends, etc. It’s safe to say that the bus is a terrible scourge when it comes to vacation transit.
A scourge that is unavoidable here – the cab fare would have been too high đ
Fortunately, we have the google. We caught our bus out to Bulguksa, a massive temple nestled in the mountains. It has several pavilions, many with brightly-restored paint. The temple rebuilt in the 1600s after it burned to the ground, and it’s been in good hands since.
One of the main stone pagodas was damaged recently, and the caretakers of the temple had set up a temporary workspace around the stone to protect their work as they repaired the damage.
The inside of many of the temple buildings had photography restrictions because they are shrines, but the buildings were filled with golden buddhas and other imagery which was important to Korean heritage.
We climbed the stairs behind the temple as we explored the gardens and artifacts that were scattered around.
We came across an interesting pavilion that was filled with little cairns. Many people were viewing the cairns, but some were stacking and re-stacking the stones. I’m not sure if the cairns had the same meaning for travelers or if it was something different.
After we got through Bulguksa, we headed up to Seokguram grotto. It’s above the temple on the mountain and my foot and illness would have not cooperated with the ascent. Fortunately, there were people who were more than willing to take us up the mountain in a cab. I’m glad we did – even though we were copping out on the hike, the views from the mountain road were beautiful.
In front of Seokguram is a bell you can ring for a donation of 1,000 won. Ring it, we did!
No pictures were allowed in the grotto due to its religious nature, but it was filled with several images of Buddha and a lot of beautiful paint.
Below the grotto, there was an area for people to purchase roof tiles and lanterns for prayers. The lanterns were strung up above the exit from the grotto like a brightly-colored rainbow.
We did the hike down the mountain, which was just over 2km. It would have been definitely horrible to hike up the path – it was steep and full of a lot of stairs.
We found a little spring halfway down the mountain path which was fed by a little mountain stream.
We made it back down the mountain and caught the bus to Bomun Lake. We got off on the wrong stop and had to walk back around the lake to the complex, but it was beautiful as the sun was setting.
We were hoping to see an outdoor music performance, but I think we missed the performance time by about a week. The tourist areas were a ghost town, but at least it was a nice night for a walk.
Defeated by bad timing, we returned to our hostel. We packed our stuff and got ready to head out the next morning on an early train back to Seoul.