After the hotel buffet we walked just a few blocks to the mounds that pop up through central Gyeongju. Each of these is a burial mound, and somehow look very natural and very unnatural at the same time. People had lived among them and didn’t realize they were man made until a man dug into one in the 20s. I’m not sure how you could see these and think “yep, just a hill”.

After walking around them, we went into one that has been excavated and then rebuilt to show how each was constructed. It was a well done exhibit. This stuff is old hat for Millie now and she doesn’t ask as many deep questions as she used to.

From here we walked past many more mounds and through a park to the national museum, which houses all the artifacts that have been found in the excavations.

We left the hotel in multiple layers and by this point were all in tshirts. The park was so beautiful. I’m not sure if it’s always like this or extra pretty because of the upcoming APEC event. Everything is in bloom.

We arrived at the museum which was getting set up to host the event. The entire city has official signage, so it feels like the day before SXSW in Austin. Except if SXSW was for world leaders. We did a quick walk around the museum, and then walked back through the park.

There were multiple street festivals happening with stands selling everything you can imagine. We stopped for a while to watch a very entertaining street performer. Here he was doing a bizarre rendition of “Let it Go” from Frozen.

We stumbled upon a craft beer festival which we stopped at, naturally. We were hungry and got some food from various vendors. There was live music in the distance, the sun was shining, and we were having an ice cold hoppy beer. It felt like home.

For some reason people kept coming over to give Millie free stuff, like little toys and candy. We had quite a collection.

The sun started setting and we caught the setup of a drone show over the tombs. It was a weird juxtaposition of ancient and modern societies.

We walked back to the hotel and had Sunday movie night. Tonight’s movie was Elemental. We then watched the behind the scenes documentary about the filmmaker, who is Korean-American. I of course cried at him talking about his parents and his path to making the movie. It was an unexpected nice cultural tie-in for Millie to connect the movie to South Korea.