Daegu City Tour

This past weekend I vowed to be more independent in my tourist-ing around the city, and went on a Daegu City Tour by myself. These are pretty cool, and all of the big cities have them in Korea. You pay about $8 for the day, and you hop on and off the tour buses at the designated stops/times, and its unlimited for the whole day. I got a late start, but had time to see three of the locations on it. (you can make the pictures larger by clicking on them)

First, I went to the Bullo-dong Tombs. Daegu has 137 tombs right in the city, which is because Daegu was a part of the Silla Empire (remember the post about Gyeong Ju?).

I wore flip flops and was hung over. I was not prepared for the hiking portion of the morning.

Lots and lots of tombs, each one labeled with a little plaque and a number.

After the tombs, I wandered around the area waiting for the next bus, and found a really cool outdoor market that stretched on for blocks and blocks. They had all sorts of strange things and smells, amazing textures and colors. It was beautiful.

I am addicted to peppers in Korea.

Korea has a lot of telephone wires. Between the buildings, everything is exposed and cutting through the mountain views. It makes for a very unique picture of the city.

My second stop was the Goo-Am Folk Village. This is a living museum - they have traditional aspects of Korean culture on display and it is generally hands on. This was a small one, but was interesting nonetheless.

Everything here is cute.

Everything.

I was taught out to make egg baskets out of straw. To me, this doesn't look like a basket, but they have handles and are cute. Don't worry, those are foam balls, not real eggs.

The instructor made me this out of leaves, which I love.

I wanted a little statue of their totem poles, but they only make cutesy things in their wood carving shop, like the heart shaped stuff above.

The third stop was the Bangjja Yugi, or Bronzeware, Museum, which is up on the Palgong Mountain (remember the Dondhwasa Temple?). It aims to preserve Korea's traditional methods of bronzeware, and it is full of beautiful, intricate pieces of art. These are handbells, which I loved, since I learned to play them and all.

This is the largest gong of its style in the world, in the Book of World Records and all. I wish I had gotten some frame of reference in the shot.

These are candle sticks. I wish I had more information about everything, but there wasn't a lot of English captions. Then I tried to find a place to eat, as I had some time before my bus was coming to take me home.. a wonderful older woman working the information desk at the museum decided to walk me to a noodle place down the road, and taught me how to eat the long thin, slippery noodles with metal chopsticks. She had been studying English for twenty years, but felt uncomfortable speaking in it, since she rarely was able to practice with native English speakers. I try to explain to these people that my Korean is practically nonexistent, and their English is generally impressive, so they shouldn't be worried.. but I get the impression that a lot of people have not been as accepting of little grammar errors, which is just wrong.

Changing the subject though, the work weeks fly by, and I have been crazy busy. I am sending packages and letters to people who have sent me things already, and am excited for that. Corinne and I are going on base today, to pick up some American goods (some for Tricia, t0o!) and eat some Taco Bell. Tomorrow might be a day trip, so I should post more pictures soon.