A wandering soul in Korea: Gyeongju Cherry Blossom Trip

It feels like I've been starting all of my recent posts with 'a few weeks ago I... (insert fun trip location here)'. I promise one day I'll be caught up on my trip posts so I can do some updates about regular life stuff. Unfortunately, it's not all just awesome weekend road trips. I swear I do go to work at some point as well. And do boring things like grocery shop and clean my apartment. But who wants to hear about that stuff when I have cool weekend road trips to tell y'all about?

I recently (notice my avoidance of the phrase 'a few weeks ago I...') went on another trip with Seoul Hiking Group. I should start charging them for the publicity! Too bad I'm pretty sure my readers aka my family won't be flying here to sign up for their trips. Anyway, I went on another trip with them. This time to Gyeongju to see the cherry blossoms. South Korea's spring season is known for its beautiful cherry blossoms, and I'd been daydreaming about seeing them all winter. I had already spotted a few in Cheonan, so I was stoked to see more.

Cherry blossoms in Cheonan

This trip featured another friday night midnight bus, so we arrived at our accomodations for the night around 4 in the morning. We were staying a traditional hanok village. I'd visited one before, but I had never been inside a hanok. So I was really looking forward to it, but all I could think about when we arived was getting some sleep. Lodging on these trips usually means several people stuffed into one room on the floor. Sometimes there's a bathroom connected, sometimes not. If we're really lucky there might be a shower in that bathroom. I've gotten really good a sleeping on floors in South Korea! I've also mastered using a squater with a fully packed pack on, but that's a story for another post.

There was some confusion with our room at first (they tried to fit 15 of us into a room that was maybe 10x10ft) but after we got it sorted, I had a pretty good sleep. Well, as good as you can have in 4 hours on the floor. I woke up feeling semi-refreshed, and I was not let down by the village. It was really neat.

Beautiful hanok village

Sights around the hanok village

Hanok I slept in. It was pretty cosy.

After a quick look around, we were off for our day of cherry blossoms! We arrived in the late morning/early afternoon. About half of the group rented bikes for the day while the others went on a hike. Seeing as I was suffering from an embarrassing but semi-painful handstand injury (Korean yoga -enough said) that resulted in a sprained toe, I opted for the leisurely biking day.

We stopped at the rental shop and got pretty much the most adorable bikes ever. Armed with half-eaten kimbap, a bottle of water, and cell phone cameras, we were off to see the beautiful cherry blossoms!

Unfortunately, due to the unseasonally warm weather almost all of the cherry blossoms were dead. Seeing as there wasn't much way to predict this ahead of time, we were pretty bummed when this came as a surprise to us. According to my kids, China is to blame for global warming. And acne. And one kid's grandma's bad back. And bad hair days. Thanks a lot, China!

During our whole trip we saw maybe four cherry blossoms. However, we did have a lot of fun riding around town. And we saw some beautiful flowers. And ate some awesome grilled kimchi! So I choose to think of the day as a success.

Underground tombs

The lone cherry blossom on our bike ride.

Beautiful flowers

A kindly Korean father was adamant about taking this photo of me.

Just riding through the flowers. Life is great!

Nature in Korea! I had to capture it.

On the way home we stopped at a temple (can't remember its name -whoops). After a short walk we were able to see it. It wasn't the best temple I've been to (Asia is turning me into a temple snob and I have even left Korea yet) but it was pretty.