Kurt Cobain, Ronald McDonald, and a sad clown with an accordion

 Today we found new adventures, and made the most of our free time in Gyeongju. 

We ate another hearty breakfast at the Hilton.  That Hilton buffet is world class, with everything one could want for breakfast from any number of countries. 

We arrived at the Teddy Bear Museum with almost no clue what we were in for.  What we found made us laugh and exclaim “Awwwww” repeatedly.

The back story of the museum is that teddy bears invented a time travel museum and went back in time to study dinosaurs  but some bad bears tried to steal the machine and bring dinosaurs to the future  to get away, a teddy family hid the Time Machine by traveling back to the Silla period in Gyeongju, witnessing the major events in the towns history.  Along the way they had space and undersea adventures.  

Oh yeah, and Marty McFly and Doc Brown were there with the Delorian looking at the dinosaurs too.  

We were fortunate to have had history day before the teddy bear museum, because we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to follow the storyline. 

The museum was filled with various photo opportunities which Jane easily took to. 

They offered a chocolate experience, so we went for that too. 

We decorated cookies using melted chocolate and candies.  The idea was to make them bears, but we all adapted the supplies to at least one other animal. Jane made a rat, Joel made Jelly, and I made Bacon. We really miss our pets. 

Somehow we all succeeded without getting chocolate stains on our clothes. 

High on teddy bear fun, we decided to visit a second museum. This one was for classic cars from around the world. Joel was in car Heaven. 

This is the early predecessor to Jane’s beloved Bongo III truck. 

Keeping on theme, they also had a Delorian. 

After this second museum, we were on a roll and decided to hit up a third museum. This one was called the “Kidult Museum”, a collection of classic to modern toys and objects. It turned out to be spooky, creepy even.

Here we found Kurt Cobain, Ronald McDonald, and a sad clown with an accordion. 

The owner particularly enjoyed making displays in old hollowed out tube televisions. 

There were also back to the future toys in this museum, so we were on a roll. Heck, there were every major line of toys you could think of in this museum, with perhaps an emphasis on Star Wars and anime. 

Having been so entertained by 3 museums, we decided to tackle a 4th. We drive to Gyeongju Bird World. We hadn’t read much about it but we figured live birds would be in there. Boy oh boy, we were in for the biggest treat of the day.  

On the way in, I was scanning the displays for birds or animals, and didn’t see one in this tank. I looked down and discovered a massive snake.  Somehow that caught me off guard, and I jump-scared. Jane found this hilarious and mocked me repeatedly, asking me where the bird was in this tank. 

In Bird World, you enter the enclosures with the birds.  This was quite a surprise. But first, Koreans appear to be mostly terrified of birds, and second they’re very much rule followers. Nobody messed with the birds.

 These birds were funny, but they were really just hungry, waiting for the next feeding time. 

Many birds were locked up and you couldn’t visit them. This guy walked straight over to see us and looked like he wanted some human interaction, but alas he was locked down. 

Finally, we entered the Lolli Parrot enclosure, a two-story cage where one can walk around the second story with the birds.  At first, these guys would stay near us but wouldn’t come too close. We hung out talking to them for about 10 minutes. That was long enough for the entire gang to decide we were fun. First, one landed on Jane’s hand. 

Second, one decided it was in love with Joel’s earlobes. He licked and beaked his earlobes the rest of our stay in the enclosure. He didn’t hurt Joel but it did tickle. This guy refused to say goodbye to Joel when we left. He instead crawled to the top of his head and hung on to his hair as we tried to extricate him. He was sad to see Joel’s delightfully exposed earlobes leave him. 

All the birds seemed to love Joel. 

This guy loved my hair and twisted himself up in it. 

And as no surprise, every bird simply adores Jane. They all took turns visiting her  (except Joel’s earlobe friend who never left his shoulders).

These guys also loved shoes. We had to be careful not to walk. 

These two turned into real clowns with each other and Jane. They took turns lying on their back while the other wrestled him. In no way did they have to be on their backs. They could have flown away. They were like wrestling brothers, never hurting each other, just harassing each other. They gave us a hearty good laugh. 

This guy lives on the checkout counter in the gift shop. We were so excited to see a Conjure like our nephew bird boys. We played with him for awhile too. He loved scratches and sweet talk, just like the Spangenberg bird boys. 

All told, we stayed in this museum for about 1.5 hours just petting and playing with birds. It was a magical time. Oh yeah, there were flowers. Pretty flowers. We were so high on birds we just breezed around them.  

Somehow we all succeeded without getting bird poop stains on our clothes. 

We finally had to leave because we really had to go get some food. Our hearty hotel breakfast was over ages ago, and we were very hungry!  If not for being hungry, we might have stayed the afternoon petting birds. 

We drove into old town where a bunch of restaurants are.  To our dismay, we learned that Koreans close restaurants from 3 to 5 PM and it was almost 3pm. They call this window break time, a time when the cooks and servers eat. We had to search all over for a restaurant that didn’t have a break time or would let us eat during break time. 

What we found was an open hot pot rice restaurant. We didn’t know what that meant but rice, veggies, and beef sounded right to us anyway. 

When we sat down, they brought a carafe of ice cold water and another carafe of boiling hot water. The waiter said, “green tea” and pointed to the hot one. Jane poured a cup and all debated whether it was green tea or just hot water. 

We each order the beef rice hot pot, and in response they bring us some cryptic English instructions. 

We kept reading these instructions trying to decode what they meant.  The only thing it explained was the purpose of the hot green tea (or water).

Our food came out and now we were really confused. We were issued an empty bowl and a bowl that looked ready to eat. 

Finally, the waiter made some gestures to explain, and gave us spoons. We emptied the metal bowl into the white bowl except for the rice that stuck. Then we added green tea and put the lid on the metal bowl. Then we ate the beef rice and vegetables. The seaweed sheets were intended to act as tortillas for the beef rice mixture, which both Joel and Jane embraced. 

Overall, the meal was fantastic! Jane and I didn’t care for the watery scorched rice but the rest was delightful. Jane gave it rave reviews. 

We returned for afternoon siesta and quiet time after a full day of museums. 

Later that evening, we went back into town for dinner, this time Italian. They nailed it. 

We especially appreciated how they cut the calzone with scissors. 

This ends our Gyeongju story. Tomorrow we head out early for Busan, a beautiful beach town that is the 2nd largest city in the country.