Bringing the Mother around Korea (Day 3) [Gyeongju]

Took a bus to Gyeongju, where we first checked-in to our hotel which was really near the bus terminal. Funnily enough, I forgot to take the luggage out of the bus and it was really fortunate that we were staying near the bus terminal or something bad would have happened. Anyway, having recently passed my driver's licence test in Korea, I was really looking forward to renting a car and driving my mum around since Gyeongju's a place where it's tough to travel by bus seeing that the intervals are every 30 minutes and it was mighty hot outside.

On the first day we decided not to rent as we had already arrived in the afternoon. After we left our stuff in the hotel and washed up, we came out and took a bus seemingly to the Bomun Lake, but we got off at the wrong stop and ended up here at this monumental location which was extremely deserted with not a single soul around. We felt like we were walking around in some deserted town in such heat. I expected there to have some people, seeing that it was summer break and schools were on break, even if there weren't many because it was a weekday.

Decided to walk from where we were to Bomun Lake seeing that it wasn't too far (via the app) and also waiting for the bus would mean waiting at the bus stop for another 30 minutes. Walked on and saw a huge pagoda along the way, really beautiful, really tall and I just had to take a photo of it.

Arrived near Bomun Lake after 30 minutes or more of walking and arrived at a money museum situated nearby. The eerie thing about it was that there was not a soul in sight. Like literally as we were walking around, the place looked well kept and maintained but there was nobody, not even a shopkeeper in sight.

All the shops around were closed and the shutters were all drawn and it really seemed like a scene out of a horror movie. Fortunately we did not go there at night or it would have been freaky. Finally saw people when we were nearing Bomun Lake and to our dismay, the place was closed. Apparently, Gyeongju, or at least Bomun Lake, is really popular during spring time, when there are cherry blossoms and the weather is still cool, people would ride duck boats on the lake. When we had arrived, the entire place was under renovation, seemingly because the peak season was already over.

 

Continued walking around and took a few buses around to find dinner, where a few places we went to were closed. Honestly speaking, even having planned the trip, it's horribly tough to plan even the dinner locations especially if it wasn't the peak season and you wouldn't even know whether they were open or not. Finally went to a well known downtown area where people usually go for their meals and had beef ribs. It was really really good but a little more toward the pricey side.

Called it a night after dinner and decided to head back to rest since we had a long day the next day of walking and traveling to all the far places in Gyeongju. It wasn't a very long day considering we spent the first half of it traveling from Busan to Gyeongju, settling our lodging and then finding our way to most of the places to find it closed, but in addition to the heat we were just fatigued and in need of a very good rest. (Did I mention the beds here were phenomenal?)