A Moderately Successful Day Of Sightseeing

MH and I came up with a great plan to visit the historic areas of Gyeongju. Little did we know, South Korea had other plans for us. When we arrived at the KTX train station at 9 AM, the train we wanted was full and the next available train to our destination was at 12:30 PM. 

Since we had some time to kill, we did some local sight seeing in Seoul and visited the Changdeokgung palace, a world heritage site as an "outstanding example of Far Eastern palace architecture and garden design." - UNESCO 

With a hour and a half left to spare, we went to the National Folk Museum of Korea which is located within the grounds of the Gyeonbokgung Palace.  The museum had a lot of great exhibits and nicely highlighted Korean history, lifestyles, and culture. 

We finally made it to Gyeongju by 2:30 PM and immediately jumped on the local bus to go to the Bulguksa temple. The temple is at the end of a hilly path and the slow moving crowds made hard to get there quickly. When we arrived at the temple, we took our photos and then high tailed it out of there. The sun was starting to set and we still wanted to visit the Seokguram Grotto.

According to the website, you can catch the bus from the Bulguksa temple to the Seokgurum Grotto. However, the bus runs on 30 minute intervals and we were cutting it close to the closing time. The information desk at the Bulguksa temple told us that the Seokgurum Grotto closed at 5:30 PM so we made the game time decision to follow the map and hike there ourselves. Long story short, we didn't make it. After huffing and puffing up the hill for 25 minutes and with the Seokgurum Grotto in sight, some tourists headed in the opposite direction kindly informed us at the Seokgurum Grotto closed at 5:00 PM. Fail. 

[WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MY PHOTO OF THE SEOKGURUM GROTTO]

The trip home didn't make our defeat easy to swallow either. MH and I waited at the bus stop in the dark for over a hour and a bus never came. Worried that we were going to miss our train, we hailed a cab and jumped in, too bad the driver only spoke Korean and proceeded to drive like a mad man, going the opposite direction on one way streets, through narrow residential alleys, and a couple rice patty fields. If anything bad was going to happen, I was convinced it was going to happen right then and there. We later discovered that he decided to take the back roads to avoid the horrendous traffic on the highway and we arrived at the train station on time, safe, and sound.