Good morning. I'm developing a routine here in Gyeongjue of sneaking out of the room with the laptop, taking a walk and then blogging the previous day. Thatis, if you consider two days in a row a routine...we're out of here today. Off to tour Hyundae Industries and then cruise back to Seoul. 
Yesterday was a day of tombs, temples and museums with a bit of teacher fun stuff thrown in. Lots of ancient Korean history here. The Silla royal family is the one credited with unifying the peninsula during the Chinese Tang dynasty, 700 something. This place is their home base, with many palaces and tombs related to their kings and queens. I got to wear a King's outfit that they had at this place where school field trips go to makes little pagodas made of soap and do rubbings of various hitorical thingns. I did the royal observatory and the great bell.
We started at the National Museum, or at least this city's version of it. Even though much smaller, the collection here was very accessible and I enjoyed it much more than the one in Seoul. Of course in Seoul I found a spot on the 4th floor where I could just sit and vege as I was ill. Here I was into the Buddha carvings and again, the skill of the curators to display the artifacts in some pretty spectacular architecture. In the back of one off the four buildings there is a collection of headless Buddhas, kind of an interesting approach... They didn't have any particular explanation for it, but had 3 overall themes. 1- that if a buddha statue is going to break, it will be a tthe weak point, the neck. 2- When the confucians came in and took over for a century or more off and on, they sometimes went on anti Buddhist rampages. (Bamiyan revisited...) 3- The Japanese, of course. Japan is a real historical bogeyman here, and not without reason. Their occupation from 1910-1945 is too recent and the effects too obvious for it to go away. It shows up time after time in place after place.
We got to go into a tomb that had been excavated. There is a section of the city that has these grave mounds and his one has been set up to allow visitors to see the construction from inside, along with some displayed artifacts of the king buried there. The crown I am wearing is representative of the style, and the robe is from paintings, which they commissioned regularly. (That last fact Ii believe is not accurate for the Silla, but is for the Josen, different dynasties.) Got to climb to the top of one after lunch, where we found beer cans and cigarette butts left from someone's lunch...
Went up a long and winding mountain road to a Buddha grotto. After conquering Korea, the Japanese had disassembled it to remove it and reasssemble it in Japan, but thendeecided to stay and colonize the whole peninsula. So they put it back together bt had a pile of leftover parts. Sounds like me and a car repair project. It was nice but too touristy for me.
On and on- to a Buddhist temple halfway down the mountain. Found out that the hanging fish in the Buddhist temple are rattled around from the inside...I'll have to Google that one.
Cool ending to the day was unexpected! AsI was sort of waiting around with a bunch of others organizing for a bit of socializing, i hear some one say "Fitz!" and I get this big kiss and hug. It was Blanche from my China trip. Ii knew that she was in Korea somewhere, but meeting in the lobby of the same hotel was quite a coincidental shock! Anyway, Mimi, from my Japan trip is co leading a trip with her and their group is here at the smae time. I ended up leaving my gang and joining up with theirs for a coffee and some catching up.
Drove up this windy mountain road to a Buddha
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