Gyungbukgung Palace (bless you!)

On Sunday, we played tourist and went to visit one of the national treasures of Korea--Gyungbukgung Palace. This palace was once used by the kings of the region about 1500 years ago. It's been well maintained, despite having been burned to the ground by the Japanese about 500 years ago and then rebuilt. The South Korean government has hired its most skilled craftsmen to maintain this building. Each and every post has intricate, hand-painted designs painted on them, and there are many, many buildings. It's pretty amazing!

This is the front gate. It's the biggest gate and is guarded by, well, guards. They are the guys in red.
Here's Michael.
And me.
This is a picture of the changing-of-the-guard ceremony. We were lucky to catch it. The guy beats that big drum, and they have a whole ritual. The painting that you can see on the drum is the kind you see throughout the whole palace.
These are the new guards, coming to replace the old ones.
This is the throne room of the king. He would sit in here and conduct official business.
Me. You can see that fall is here! The leaves all over are changing to to red and beautiful orange.
I don't know what this is, but I thought it was pretty neat.
The Palace is also guarded by sculptures of the 12 zodiac animals. This one is crying bird poop tears.
Another amazing structure!
We were also able to visit the Korean Folk Museum. You may wonder what Loofing Tiles are, but they are in fact supposed to be Roofing Tiles. I get no end of mild pleasure over the R/L problem here.
It started to rain. Heavily. There was also a lightning storm directly overhead.
In the front, the throne room, in the background is that tall pagoda.

An excellent trip overall! This place is truly amazing!