Itinerary help Gyeongju or not?

I am in the final stages of planning out trip to South Korea for the first week in April. We are a family of 4 (13 and 15 years old kids) travelling to Korea for the main purpose of exposing our adopted son the his birth country. We will take 2 days and tour the orphanage and other associated sites. We will have 9 non travel days and I am trying to find out if the trip to Gyeongju is something I should plan for. It seems like a good location to get out of Seoul and see some countryside. We would take the bullet train down as far as we could. If this is not the place I should go to any other ideas where we should go?

Thanks for any help.

Ellen

Itinerary help Gyeongju or not?

Are you planning to take it as a day trip? I wouldn%26#39;t recommend it since it will take more than 3 hrs to get there, and there are lots of sites to visit to cram in one day. Then again maybe you can combine it with Busan, in 2-3 day trip. You can take KTX, high speed train from Seoul to Dongdaegu station then transfer to local line to Gyeongju which is not high speed train. Here is more info, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongju#Tourism

For day trip, I would recommend DMZ tour (…visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_4_1.jsp) or Traditional Korean Folk Village in Yongin(…visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp…), also nearby Everland, Korea%26#39;s biggest amusement park (www.everland.com/MultiLanguage/english/)

Itinerary help Gyeongju or not?

No not as day trip, we would do some Seoul, a few days out of the city and return to Seoul for more. We are planning to hit the DMZ, the folk village, Suwon, some palaces/markets etc. I was just looking for the best out of Seoul experience at that time of year.

Thanks

Ellen

Go up to Seokguram before sunrise. I woke up a sleeping taxi driver at the nearest train station to drive me to the mountain top. Hundreds of Koreans will be up there waiting for the sunrise. Then walk to Grotto when it opens. There is a short cut path down the mountain to Bulguksa temple with a mountain side spring water rest stop about a half way down. It was cold %26amp; delicious.

One more thing. You may consider getting the Korea Rail Pass if you plan to go a few places by KTX and other trains.

…korail.com/2007/…w_etr02100.jsp

One other place to recommend is Mt. Naejangsan National Park from Jeongeup KTX station(less than 3 hrs. from Seoul. Many old temples and cable car to the mountain tops. There are restaurants at the entrance to the park that serve the traditional mountain vegetable dishes and steaming meat/seafood pots called Sanchae Jeogsik(not hot unless you eat Kimchi).

It was the most delicious food I ever had anywhere and was so cheap.

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