I had brunch near Bulguksa temple, took a bus to the grotto on the mountain, then hiked to the top and back down for another coffee. Then I picked up Romana from her presentation at a nuclear power facility, checked into our cool hanok accommodation. We then got dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant. This was day two of my four-day trip to Gyeongju.

I checked out of the hotel and drove straight to Bulguksa and to Your Round cafe. It was a good sandwich but I had to remove the butter! Decent coffee too.

Then I had some time to fill before the bus that takes you to Seokguram Grotto. I walked around the village area. It seems the village only exists to cater to visitors to Bulguksa Temple. There were lots of yellow trees and few bright red ones. Some walls had murals on them. I headed towards the place to catch the bus and quickly visited a museum (신라를빛낸인물관) which had quite interesting paintings. Unfortunately I didn’t have time so ran to the bus stop.

Tohamsan Mountain Hike

The bus goes all up the mountain road to the parking lot that leads to Seokguram Grotto, a cave that houses a buddha statue. I’d been there in May this year with my dad, so I was only going to use this as my starting point to hike to the peak of Tohamsan Mountain. It was quite chilly and windy. The forest was mostly brown! I made it quite quickly to the top where there was a nice view north.

From then on, it was a very leafy hike back to ground! It was serene and beautiful tramping through the brown leaves.

At the bottom was large grave yard with lots of grass mound tombs. Nothing like the kings ones in Gyeongju so probably for local families. These were also in various states of disintegration and would need to be saved from disappearing into the ground. I exited the trail though a small village with some nice houses. There was a grape farm and a super friendly jindo dog determined to get some scritches (I obliged).

It was a bit of a trek back to the parking lot. I had a bit of time before I was due to pick Romana up, so I had coffee and a pastry at Roamers Coffee (로머스커피). Great name!

I drove to collect Romana, then straight to our hanok accommodation. There was a parking space right outside the gate! Wow! Learned later it was reserved for the guesthouse, but still… Guesthouse was great (photos in the next post). We then walked to Lili Guan (리리관) a cool 80s/90s themed Taiwanese restaurant for some great food.

Then I wanted ice cream ad we went to the park area. Ice cream was good but the server was a bit sulky because the two of us only ordered one ice cream!

Places visited this Gwangju trip