I also just went back south to Gyeongju, since I wanted to hike Namsan there and had a friend visiting who also wanted hike it . It was last week on a national holiday- Children's day, so there were no classes, perfect time to go. It helped that the weather was absolutely perfect.

This area was the heart of Silla period Buddhism and the whole region is saturated with temples, shrines, statures, and historic sites. Namsan is a large and very rugged mountain covered with statues and Buddhas carved into the rock. It also offered some really tough and fun hiking. The top had several parts to steep that you basically hauled yourself up with a rope.

Here are a couple different views of the path, note the rope in the second one:



Here are a few Buddhas on the way up, this is only a tiny selection of what we passed. there were several other routes with other places as well.





The most impressive was the seated Seokgayeorae image, which is the largest Buddha image on Mt. Namsan.



Hard to relay a sense of the scale because of the size of the mountain.


This Buddha has a nice view.



Here is a view of part of the mountain as we walked down:




In Gyeongju we ate insanely well. We went to a sam gyeop sal place which was the definition of a grease trap. Check out the walls:




The food was more than just the sam gyeop sal--there were about ten other things to put on the grill, including jjukkumi (mini octopuses) and several other kinds of critters.



Hell of a feast. With several maektchus, the total was 29,000 won.

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