South Korea 5: Navigating a bird jail and the Korean countryside

Being that I like taking pictures of birds, I took us to the Gyeongju Bird Park.  Instead of being similar to the Vancouver Bloedel Conservatory, this expensive admission park had birds in small cages and birds in some larger cages.  It was a pretty depressing experience.  We walked through quickly and then left.




The bird jail was a bit of a bus ride out of town, so we took a bus a little way back before stopping at Bunhwangsa, a temple built in 634.  There wasn't much to see aside from the building, so I decided to take us on foot through the nearby fields to what I thought was the beautiful temple of Hwangnyongsa.  What I didn't realize was that the pictures I saw online were of the model replacement, as the original had been burned down by the Mongols quite some time ago.  I was informed of this by a sign in the fields.  So, it was essentially ground stones with plaques and a building with a small replica of what might have once been there.



We continued walking until we were back near the palace and pond of the night before.  We kept walking until we arrived at the Woljeonggyo Bridge.  This bridge was destroyed and rebuilt, but I knew it ahead of time!  We stopped to rest on some rocks near the river and we watched the insects.



On the other side of the bridge was an old hanok village but instead of having anything even remotely like the olden days, it was just chintzy souvenirs, vending machines, and even a pizza place.  Disappointing.  We continued our walk all the way back to the hotel.

On our way to dinner, we passed the Potato Hotel.