Day 7: The Cold, the Mounds, the Beauty
Before I talk about Gyeongju a bit, and the general sense of happiness being back in Korea, I want to just quickly mention that I have been exceedingly lucky about weather across all these trips as a whole. I can't think of a trip that has been seriously negatively impacted by rain or weather (other than say the Typhoon that delayed my prior Korea trip). I guess Istanbul earlier this year was grayer and mistier than one wouild like, but never rained enough to impact anything. Same with all my Asia trips over the years - maybe a day or two of rain here or there, but given how many times I've went to Southeast Asia over the past five years, to never get even one day of wall-to-wall rain is super lucky. Anyway, back to the main show.
There is something just so whimsically special about South Korea, and also about these smaller towns. Gyeongju so far being an even smaller, even more picturesque version of Jeonju, where I went to in 2022. Busan is something of a metropolis, and Seoul is one of the great Megacities in the world - but Gyeongju is walkable, and more than that the loveliness of its Hanok-village style areas, shop facades, architecture and what-not makes it a place you want to walk around in. There are sights that require a bit of travel (teh two main temples of the area), but I reserved that for tomorrow. Today will be about just getting to learn, experience and live Gyeongju.
The first place I went to is very representative of Gyeongju, and Korea as a whole, which si their love affair with coffee shops. This extends to the coffee as well - my cappuccino at Coffee Place (the first shop I went to) was truly one of the best cappuccino's I've ever had. But what's more is how much care the people making the coffee put into it, and even more is the decor - these places are like straight out of an interior design / architecture magazine. They're all stunning; they all generally have great coffee. I have no idea how they all stay in business, but I'm so tahnkful they all do.
The sites within the city generally fall into three buckets - first are a stupefying amount of mounds/mini-hills strewn aroudn the city, primarily in two parks in the city center. We'll come ot the reasons shortly. Next is a larger park area that features lakes, botanical gardens, some rebuilt temples. And third is the lanes, alleys and walkways that make up the hanok-village-style shopping and food district. In a day you can see all of these (I mean, that was the plan!). I started with the mounds.
For a bit of background, Gyeongju was the old seat of the Silla dynasty, one of the ruling families of Korea that predated the Joseon dynasty unifying the country in the 700s. One of the notable things about the Silla Kingdom is they buried their kings and other dignitaries in tombs that were created under carved out above ground mounds that today resemble small hills. They're everywhere, to the point I have to imagine many are just fake, in that they aren't tombs but just created to contineu the theme.
The most notable of them are within the Daereungwon Park, which is one of two parks in the center of the city. Within the grounds og the Daereungwon are various of tehse tombs, one of which you can go inside as they've converted it into a mini-museum. They've also done quite well manicuring the rest of the grounds as well. One of the striking parts of the grounds are the trees which are a perfect red and orange - a very much unexpected opportunity to see more fall colors! Apparently in cherry blossom season a lot of them are a perfect pink hue, but I'll take the reds, oranges and ambers. All in all, the Daereungwon is a really love complex.
Not as good, but still worth seeing if you find yourself in Gyeongju, is the city's other main park complex, of which I don't know if it has a specific name. It houses two main sites - one of which, the Wolseong Fortress, was under complete restoration, and the other is the Cheomseongdae Observatory Tower, which is a short citadel-like tower at the North end of the park. In between are some nice man-made moats, and sculptures. On the whole, again this is perfectly pleasant, though probably a bit too big and less notable compared to the Daereungwon.
The final non-shopping/eating outdoor place I visited within the grounds of central Gyeongju was the Donggung Palace & Wolji Pond, a small park abutting the main one I talked about last, but in its own area. It is a rebuild old Silla palace, with three temple buildings rebuilt, painted the infamous Korean royal green hue, and overlooking a lake affixed with lotuses, beautiful greenery and rock formations. It's small, in a good way - a quick little walk around and you get a bunch of great angles of the three regal temple buildings and the lake below. There were some picture placards throughout showing the temples lit up at night that looked quite fabulous as well.
Before I get to the shopping lanes, I'll quickly touch on lunch, which was at Olyukdon - a small eatery, though well reviewed. It serves basically one thing - a set lunch of one main pork soup with the clearest, quite refined broth, and then a choice of two pork sides - one being a pork meatball with wasabi and mushroom, and the other slices of pork with a local sauce. There's also unlimited kimchi (hard radish), and a soybean paste to dip the pork in. I got the side of the meatball along with teh soup, and it was excellent. The pork in the soup intentionally bland as the idea is to dip it into the soybean paste which worked magically (think a soybean version of the peanut sauce for satay). The meatball was honestly my favorite part of the meal, so well cooked and distributed in its construction across pork, green onion, chinese spinach and mint. This is the type of spot I had in mind when coming back to Korea.
As was the entirety of the 6x2 block shopping area (which probably extends a bit into a 8x4, but the outer blocsk are more residential). The main street in the middle is so similar to the best types of streets of this nature I saw more in Japan, than Korea to be honest. There is definitely a preference towards food here than shopping, which isn't bad. So many great looking coffee shops, bakeries, fried dough spots (seems to be a thing in Korea), and so much more. On the shopping side you had a few handicraft spots that I perused, but more of it was geared towards the kitschiness that Korea is known far: comic-related stuff, cutesy art and clothing stores, similarly cute and adorable stationary stores. Very little was normal tourist trap nonsense. Granted, there really weren't any places that were offering my favorited stone and ceramic handicrafts, but that's not really what Korea is about.
My last stop pre dinner was at HeuHeuHeu, a craft beer bar that was right out of my dreams - definitely a place that will find itself fairly comfortably in my list of favorite beer bars. The only unfortunate part was the barman telling me that they were out of about a third of their taps awaiting a refill order that got dealyed. Still, the three I tried were all excellent, including one of the better Hazy's I've ever had in Asia. They also had really well curated food options - where I ordered a "ham platter" which is basically their version of a Spanish tapas-style pork board. The decor was great, the vibe was great, the beer was brilliant. From my research, this is the only place in town to get craft beer, which was all right by me because it was awesome.
Dinner was at JusteUne, a small french style with all Korean ingredients set-menu spot a few blocks from my AirBNB. The place was perfect, with a super eager chef that served just beautiful plates. My favorite was probably a dish of "snail shape pasta" with a scallop and soybean sauce and dehydrated korean cabbage strings. That or the scallop dish which followed. It was all so perfect - very similar to the Izakaya type place I went to in Takayama a year back. These places in these towns are what make Korea (and Japan as well) so endlessly special.
That exacting pride in your work also extends to the two cocktail spots I went to after dinner. They are easily the two most notable in the city, and after tasting them, it is for good reason they have taht reputation. The first was Bar Prep, tucked into a corner of a residential building, past a sliding back door, you enter Korean cocktail heaven. They focused on stronger cocktails with Korean twists - such as using Korean chili spice in a negroni, or bitters of various Korean fruits, or interesting uses of Maekgolli and what not. The drinks took a while to make because they were all so creative and exacting.
The other spot was a bit wilder, called Bar Boon, open till 2am nightly (very late for Gyeongju - Bar Prep for comparison closes at 12), and more about fun. The drinks were fruitier, more playfully presented, but no less serious and exacting. It'/s just a graet combination of spots - the purity and science of Bar Prep to get you started, and the music, chillness and fun of Bar Boon to finish of the night.
Being back in Korea, being back in a place where I don't have to sweat, and experience more the glory of East Asia - it all is so welcome. Gyeongju is a perfect little town, and I say this knowing there's more to come tomorrow.
