We started our day long tour of Gyeongju by visiting one of the many tombs in the area. This one is this only one that has been opened and excavated so that the visitors could see what the inside of one of them looks like. The outside of the tombs is a huge mound of earth, and there are many in the area that all look like small hills. The inside has the coffin, along with many of the person’s valuables, because the people of the Silla empire believed that these belongings would follow the person into the afterlife.

After visiting the tomb, we headed over to an original building from over 1000 years ago that was usd to study the constellations. This was an interesting sight because it showed that people from these ancient civilizations were advanced enough to understand things not even from our planet.

The next stop of the day was the national museum in Gyeongju, which is where the majority of the artifacts found in the area are kept. They had the relics placed in chronological order in the museum, so as we walked through the museum we could see the progression of this ancient society through time. I enjoy these kinds of museums because it shows the rich history of the area, and helps to put everything into perspective. It is sometimes tough to be able to comprehend, because the history of America is much shorter than most of Asia and Europe. So, it was a nice change of pace from American museums.

Our final stop of the day was two Buddhist temples that were also over 1000 years old. The day we visited also happened to be Buddha’s Birthday, so there were lots of extra celebrations going on. It was a unique environment to experience, since Buddhism is very uncommon in the states. We were able to enter a temple carved into the side of a mountain, and see a Buddha sculpture about 20 feet tall. It seemed surreal. Afterwards, we visited a couple other temples and then headed back to the hotel. This was one of my favorite days, because I was able to learn a lot about the older history of Korea.