Saturday, April 10, 2010

Day 15-16 (6/4 - 7/4) Cheongha - Gyeongju - Busan 49km (502km)

Cherry blossom, oh cherry blossom, wherefore art thou?

It's spring. Korean's favourite season*, and for good reason. It gets warm, one gets to hike and allegedly we all get cherry blossoms. Everywhere we've been so far we've had the promise of blossoms. While buds on trees tease us, Koreans all over the country over the last 2.5 weeks are assuring us that they are only "one week away".

It has taken 500km for us to finally see some blooming cherry blossoms. It was worth the wait. Skeletons of trees are now dressed up in sexy white, pink, yellow and crimson numbers. Hills suddendly don't seem quite so steep and 30km by the highway not so dull.

Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla Kingdom a millenium ago, is an entire UNESCO world heritage site with huge tomb mounds, fortresses and palaces dotting the city. With the addition of cherry blossoms this city was elegant and didn't look a day over 800.

To do it justice we stayed almost another day and caught the late train to Busan. Here we met our second awesome couchsurfing host Mary who showed us some of the expat Busan nightlife.

*sample size 2 of 50 million

Cycling Summary
Day 15 - Cheongha to Gyeongju 48km
Day 16 - Train from Gyeongju to Busan





Gyeongju

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