As far as lodging, we started off staying in a jimjilbang (짐질방). This is a public bath house, men and women are separate for bathing of course. Then there is room that is kept at room temperature and you wear the comfortable clothes that they provide for you. You sleep on the floor with a wooden block pillow. It wasn't the most comfortable but it was really fun to wake up to twenty other people sprawled on the floor, plus it was really cheap.
Anyhow, we started off our trip by going and seeing some burial mounds
They haven't excavated many graves but the ones they did had a ton of cool stuff. Normally the royalty were buried like this. This crown in the next picture is probably from the 600s. 
These burial mounds are scattered everywhere in Gyeongju. some are identified and some aren't, it was really cool to see them!
This is us with the King Seongdeok bell that rings every New Year. We're also with our tour guides. Mark got to talking with a guy at the jimjilbang and the next thing we know we had a tour guide. His wife, who wanted to practice speaking English, showed us around. She was really cool!
This is Mark with a really famous military general that helped unify the three kingdoms of Korea, Kim Yushin.
And this is Mark's artistic photography skill. It's beautiful!
This is at Bulguksa (불국사). One of the oldest and largest preserved Buddhist temples.
.
This is national treasure number 20! Dabotap! There are a lot of national treasures so this one counts. This pagoda is found on the Korean 10 won coin. 
Unfortunately, we couldn't get pictures, but we got to see a really cool statue of Buddha, Seokguram. It's very famous because it's well preserved and beautiful!
My mom saw this same statue in high school before they built a building around it.
Mark, at General Kim Yushin's grave. 
Okay, so mom's name is Bak Hui-young. (박희영) Bak is her surname. This is the grave of Bak Hyeokgoese (박혁거새). Bak is his surname. He was the first King of the Silla dynasty and the founder of a Bak clan. This is my mom's dad's dad's dad's dad's ... dad's dad. So this is my great great great ... great grandfather. I'm royalty! His wife and a few of his close descendants are buried here.
For those of you who don't know, I started off as an astronomy major. I have a special spot in my heart for astronomy. This is an ancient astronomy tower built in the 700s. I loved seeing this. It's the original thing!
This is where King Munmu (문무) is buried, out in the rocks. He lived in the 700s. The beach is beautiful! This could have been a better picture, but our impromptu photographer had a little too much soju, alcohol ;)
