With the spring weather cherry blossom is in abundance everywhere. There are several cherry blossom festivals taking place, the most popular is in Jinhae, south of Daegu near the coast. A lot of folks went last weekend while we went to the Daegaya festival instead to avoid the crowds. I heard the buses and trains to Jinhae were all sold out days ahead, and we could see a bus on sa***********ing in that area that was completely packed.But since cherry blossom is e...

This weekends trip was to the Daegaya Festival, held in Goryeong, about a 25 min bus ride southwest of Daegu.Daegaya (AD 42~562) was a nation that inhabited the Gyeongsangnam-do province of Korea around the 4th Century. Daegaya was a sophisticated nation that even at this early age possessed extremely high standards of culture. They created the gayageum (a twelve-stringed traditional Korean harp) and played a large role in establishing the culture of music. They ...

This weekend a group of us travelled to Gyeongju, an hour east of daegu. This is my third time to Gyeongju. As described earlier, Gyeongju was first the capital of the Silla Kingdom in southeast Korea, then of the unified Korea, from about 50BC to 930AD. The whole town is an open air museum with an abundance of historical sites on every street. There were six of us again but two new people from last week.We travelled to the Shilla Millennium Theme Park. This is a...

I've been to five Olympic stadiums in my travels over the years (1972 Munich, 1976 Montreal, 1984 Sarajevo, 1992 Barcelona, 2008 Beijing), just missed out on visiting 1964 Tokyo, and will probably make it to 1988 Seoul soon. But I've never been to an actual Olympics event. Buying tickets for London 2012 will be near impossible and when you add in hotels/airfares the cost could be astronomical!However, living in Daegu we are fortunate that this summer they will be...

Here is a link to the other bloggers from The Korea Blog Welcoming Ceremony held March 29, 2011http://blog.korea.net/?p=2530#comment-1 2317