A morning in Gyeongju

We are trying to do this from Benny's iPad, so apologies in advance if the formatting or spelling is off.

After a few days in Seoul, which, to be honest, we both found a bit overwhelming, we took a high speed train to Gyeongju, a smaller city in the southeast corner of South Korea that has one of the largest clusters of historical sites in the country. Overall, though it is still quite hot and muggy, the weather is much more pleasant. Our first evening here we visited a park filled with large hill mounds which are tombs from the Silla period. These mounds can be found all around the city's parks, which makes for an interesting landscape. Yesterday we spent the day touring a Buddhist temple sight from around 750AD, which was quite spectacular (we will post pics soon). Then we visited a small contemporary art museum that had some interesting and funny art by young Korean artists. Today we will visit some more of the ancient sites around town.

Although we haven't added any pictures to our albums, here are some from our guesthouse, Sa Rang Chae (www.kjstay.com). The buildings are clustered around a small courtyard, and are over 100 years old. The rooms are simple, with sleeping mats instead of western-style mattresses.