an autumn trip to gyeongju, korea (tombs, forests, cafes) solo travel outside of seoul vlog
Good morning friends. I'm so sleepy. Today we are going to Gyeongju. I haven't been to Gyeongju since last spring and it was stunning. I will link that vlog down below. That's one of my favorite vlogs of all time. It was incredible. If you're looking for a place to go in Spring - amazing. But we're going right now where it's actually - like still a little bit hot in Seoul but Gyeongju got like a sudden dip in temperature so it's gonna feel like Autumn. I'm very excited. So we're just gonna walk around, chill basically. There's a forest I want to explore.
I don't know, anyway, we're gonna get on the KTX. I'm here with just enough time to grab a little bit of breakfast. Yeah welcome! Seoul is waking up, it's noisy as heck so in we go! It takes about two hours to get to Gyeongju and I'm very sleepy so this sounds like a perfect time to talk about the sponsor of this video which is Audible. As you guys probably know, Audible is a wonderful service for all things that you like to listen to including audiobooks but also podcasts and more. They offer audiobooks across every genre. I'm currently listening to Mythos by Stephen Fry and to make it even better it is narrated by Stephen Fry. If you're interested
in Greek mythology, he makes it so accessible and so funny so I was like holding in giggles the entire train ride. But along with the wonderful work of Steven Fry, they also have Audible Originals which is content exclusive to Audible and is sometimes hosted by top celebrities or renowned experts in their field. And as an Audible member, you can choose one title per month to keep from their catalog and you can keep it forever and that includes best sellers and new releases. And you also have access to a growing selection of titles that you can listen to all the time which includes audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts. The app works across all of your different devices so if you're listening on your phone and then you switch to your computer, it tracks that. And you can try Audible for free for 30 days - if you'd like to give that a try, you can go to audible.com/caricakes or text caricakes to 500 500 and get your free 30-day trial. Thank you
again to Audible for sponsoring this. All the information will be down below. It definitely kept me company as we sped through the Korean countryside and finally got to our destination. Hi everyone! Greetings from Gyeongju. It's so so so windy - we have a typhoon coming in so I'll keep this short. This is Bonghwadae tomb and we're gonna get a little coffee and go to a tea house -
I'm so sorry - but it's gorgeous, it's stunning. Welcome to Gyeongju, I love this city so much. And I can't wait to show you. I'm just gonna be here for two days and one night and - oh that's a cute coffee shop! Oh my God there's so much to do! So let's see what we get up to :) Okay so it's a little less windy. We are at Godo Coffee which is right next to Daereungwon - the like main tombs that you have to pay to go into. It's gorgeous outside. I had to take off my
jacket so it's like not quite Autumn yet but it is so nice out. I just ran into um a girl named Holly and her mom who are here so I'm glad they got weather - good weather as well. So yeah what do I have to say about it? I brought you here before so apologies if this you've heard this spiel before but Gyeongju - has motorcycles - used to be the kind of original capital and so this is where you will find most of the Royal tombs, like the largest ones. They found a lot of really interesting like treasure I guess and stuff in here, like lots of gold, so a lot of things you see in the museums are from Gyeongju. And this city this entire city is actually a UNESCO world heritage site so because of that, in this like exact area, you actually can't build anything over five stories so it just feels older, like it feels small, you can see so much sky.
It's really, it's a cool little place. It's definitely become like very touristy even for Koreans, like this little downtown area is very trendy but it also has a lot of like stuff you would see in like Hongdae or whatever like lots of photos sticker booths and stuff like that. But it has amazing food. I'm going to actually like I'm gonna hit places that I've already been to but I am going to a couple new places which is exciting. I'm honestly just down here to you enjoyed the perfect weather and I literally I could get back on the train right now after having this coffee and I would be happy so yeah I'm just gonna chill here for a second, we're gonna hit a tea house after this - sorry we're just gonna kind of cafe hop for a little bit - and literally just soak up this sun that isn't burning my skin and I'm not sweating. But yeah welcome to Gyeongju!
Hello I'm in the middle of a flower field. We're gonna head over to - why do I even do this, I don't even block the sun from my eyes - We're gonna head over to the bridge area, wrap around to the observatory, maybe get a little snack. It's a stunning day. Oh I almost ran into a butterfly. It's a stunning day. The tour guides are so friendly.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - also there is a speck of dust inside my lens can't do anything about it I'm so sorry - if you're visiting and you want to go to a city where you can just take the train there, you do have to take a bus or a taxi but once you get to kind of the center point, you're totally able to just walk everywhere, you don't even need to really use public transportation - obviously there are some other places where you might want to go but if you just have like a day-ish and you just kind of want to go to a city outside of Seoul, this is a really great one. I would also say Jeonju, but Jeonju is a little bit smaller in terms of like what you can do in the walking area but this is just so stunning like you really can't see this anywhere else other than Korea and it's just - oh it's gorgeous. If you love trees, I mean, this city is so green. It's got, I mean look at this, this is just like a forest! I mean it's beautiful, it's quiet, it's a little bit hellish in like spring I would say. Spring was incredibly crowded but now I mean it's quiet it's lovely I just can't hype Gyeongju up enough. It's really such a peaceful little place. So I'm
going to walk to the observatory, walk around the trees a little bit more, and then I'm gonna get a snack because I can't say this every time, I do this in every video, but I cannot live off of caffeine and sugar. When am I gonna learn? So yeah I will see you guys at our next stop. It is school group day oh my God, there's like thousands of kids. Okay hi, we've made it to our Airbnb. We're staying in a hanok so I might not talk tonight because it's when people are going to sleep. Hanok do not have sound proofing whatsoever, the walls are like paper, so just keep that in mind if you ever do want to stay in a hanok. Anyway I'm gonna take a little nap, I woke up very early this morning and
it's also like the hottest part of the day. I'll see you guys a little later, we're gonna hit the main tomb area kind of hopefully at like golden hour-ish so see you then! Hey! So last time I was here, like I said, I was here in - what was it - spring. There's this one particular area that's a photo zone that is so crowded and it still is even right now, but my friend Kaila and I went around the corner and there's like a gorgeous - I'll put the photo here - a gorgeous cherry blossom tree that nobody pays attention to but they just marked it off as like keep off the grass now, so sad. But the photo zone's cute, I don't know if I'll take a picture there but the light is it's - it's an hour and 15 minutes before sunset if you want to keep that in mind. Okay!
Hi! That was magical. Highly recommend coming in golden hour. And I'm going to I think grab a snack and then honestly just kind of sit in another cafe and soak up the ambiance. It's a little actually too cold to be sitting outside, I'm in like a dress and this little jacket and I'm a little chilly so anyway I stopped by this to show you this is a mogwa, and it can go bad but it doesn't always and I once saw this - the only reason I know this exists is because I saw it in a taxi once and I was like why does this taxi driver have a fruit like just on his dashboard? And Kurt told me that these actually like don't really go bad and they can kind of be really fragrant like when they get over ripe and if you just leave it kind of like in your house, it's a not air freshener, but like a scented thing. Isn't that odd? So when I'm - there's one that's like on my daily walk and now that it's like mogwa season I'm thinking of picking one and bringing it into our house just to test it out. I don't know. But anyway yeah so gorgeous, oh wait no the sun is hitting it really pretty I'm going back - I'm gonna take one more picture and then yeah I'll see you! Oh my God please don't fall you are set so precariously on this table. I just got peppermint tea, nothing really exciting, and I'm going to chill and I decided to stay outside because very soon winter will come and it will be way way way too cold to sit outside so I'm taking every single day that I can. The sunset was magnificent, I
couldn't capture it as well as it was, you know, as usual but anyway. I'm freaking the hell out and ahjumma, like halmoni halmoni level ahjumma just came up to me and said that she watched my video and she's from Busan and I've literally never had a Korean halmoni say that she wanted my videos. It's a beautiful day. Good morning, we are heading to a forest. See you there! Hi guys so we've made it. This is Samreung. It is just a
forest and it's really famous especially like certain mornings, Korea is pretty known for its fog and this place gets it just looks so magical but we have a nice clear day. Once again I don't think there's anyone anywhere nearby so I'm gonna go into the woods alone, great! There is like, there are a lot of other tombs nearby so I saw actually more school groups going in so I'm not completely alone but anyway yeah I'm going to take a little walk through I love Korean pine trees because they're so twisty turny and like always doing something weird so this has just heaven for me. I'm very excited so let's go! This is like the most stunning thing I've ever seen. I'm just gonna walk a little bit further I'm not gonna walk deeper in because I'm not like fully dressed for this - like I had no idea this was so big. This is like part of the National Park so there is - so many spiders - but also so much hiking. I, when I got here like I said, I was alone but then there was this older couple that came and they look like locals, they seem to just like hike this every morning.
And then there's, I've seen so far like four other people clearly like here to hike. It is so quiet, so beautiful, but really well maintained. This is like a proper path with the like but it's beautiful, the walk that I've gone on so far has had almost zero incline, this is the first time that I've gotten to any kind of hill and it's not even like that - I mean compared to what I usually accidentally get up to on this channel. So definitely if you are looking for a little outside of the city center thing, I just took the bus - I'll put it down below exactly where I stopped but like drop me off at the entrance. Oh my God! Also just as an aside, oh and I am using my black and white film camera so I'll update you guys with what comes out - I have no idea what the first 10 pictures were. But I went to summer camp as a American kid does sometimes, and I remember they were trying to teach us how to recognize poison ivy (or oak) and the rhyme was "leaves of three, leave them be."
Everything in this forest has three leaves! So I'm just not trying not to touch anything. Anyway yeah they're now, there are some more photographers. The light coming through is so beautiful I wish I had better skills, you don't need better equipment, you just do better skills, I wish one day but yeah everybody's, as usual, super nice - smiling, noddings, saying hello. It's good vibes here. But I'm actually gonna head kind of back. I do have to catch a train so I'm gonna get lunch first and kind of relax, look over my footage and stuff but like what a beautiful place! So definitely like this is top of my list, this was so nice and I was only here for like an hour but...Sanreung Forest. This was not planned - this was just the only place that was open right now, gorgeous! Well that was lovely. I have about 30 more minutes before I need to leave to catch my train but
I'm not hungry now but I know I'll be hungry by the time I get back to Seoul and I want to show you guys a place where you can eat. I feel like because I had those two kimbap like I haven't shown you where to eat so I'm gonna go grab I think just some jjigae. I don't know, but I'm gonna get a meal. That chocolate salt bread was so good!
Anyway yeah this was just stunning, a stunning view. Let's get food! So very pleased, that was actually really good. I didn't have any like super high expectations - it was really good jjigae. So now I'm gonna head to the - where? - train station.
It's getting a little toasty today, it's back to warmer weather, but yesterday was glorious and yeah this whole area, I mean you can't go wrong, every single thing around here is so cute. And I need to make sure that I'm going the right way so I will see you at the train yeah! Korea Okay my friends, hi we have made it to Gyeongju Station where I will be taking the train home and I'm very sleepy - that jjigae like knocked me out. It was so warm. I also didn't mention that - okay KTX going through - I didn't mention that place that I went to, had hot konguksu which I've never seen before and it - I was intrigued but not intrigued enough. Anyway just again thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video, link will be in the description box, but if you would like to give it a try 30 days for free you can go to audible.com/caricakes or text caricakes to 500 500, info down below. And yeah as always links and stuff for what I did will be in the description box and I just really can't recommend it enough - there's so much to do like outside of the Gyeongju area, there's like incredible temples like way up in the mountains and stuff that's reachable by taxi or public transportation but if you just want like a day and a half trip and you want to walk everywhere, it is a really great place. Again if you're kind of like a
beginner of outside of Seoul travel - wonderful. So I'm going to join all these people who are probably getting on my train and I will see you guys next time. We have one more video in Korea and then I'm gonna be heading to the States for a bit, giving you some autumn content over there. It's going to be my first Autumn of my parents living on the East Coast so I'm really excited to fully experience that and of course I'm going to California I'm going to see My Chemical Romance twice, maybe three times I don't know, I have no idea what's going on but I'm very excited.
So anyway thank you for coming with me to Gyeongju, and I will see you guys wherever I am, okay? Bye!
2022-10-13 23:39