Chuseok vacation day 2: Cheongju

After my adventures in Songnisan, I met up with Alanna in Cheongju. The next morning we took in the city's sights, starting with the Golden Pavilion. The path to the temple complex was lined with tall wooden totems and next to the pavilion itself was a towering modern temple. The pavilion looks quite impressive from a distance, though close up it looks rather tacky (it might actually be spray-painted gold). We walked through a crafts festival to get to a fortress-like catholic church. We then took a bus out of town to Sangdang Sanseong fortress, which now pretty much consists of its 4.2km long walls. It was interesting to see an empty fortress. Most of the fortress walls are filled with and surrounded by modern cities. We tried to get to various sites on the map in the gateway before we realized that the map was of the fortress as it was hundreds of years ago. On the way out we saw rather large spiders on the top of the bus stop shelter. That night we left the city and went out to Danyang.

The pictures for this post start here.