Insadong: Jogyesa Temple (with Grandma & Grandpa)

We drove to Insadong in Seoul and found a parking spot at a local business pay-by-hour lot.  We were only a few blocks from the Jogyesa Temple.  We wanted to show my parents one of the many Buddhist Temples that dot this beautiful country.  I was told that the Jogyesa Temple had a lotus garden in bloom right now, and since my parents hadn't seen a lotus garden, we decided that this was the spot to go!

We found the temple and upon entering the main gain we were greeted by large iron statues and paper lanterns.  The kids could see all the lotus flowers and were super excited to see them more closely!

I was expecting more of a large water field with flowers, but what we found were hundreds of pots filled with flowers.  There were pink, white, and purple lotuses all throughout the temple property!

Little A kept telling me that these were the flowers that I saw in Bali and she was so happy that she gets to see them too!  My girls haven't seen a lotus flower either, so they were loving how big the flowers were and especially how big the leaves were!

After getting our fill of the flowers, we came to the large courtyard for the temple.  There was a huge rainbow sun shade looking thing above the courtyard.  There were fish and designs on the make-shift ceiling.  There was also a huge tree that had hundreds of lanterns on all the branches.  The temple had an active congregation chanting.  I'm glad we came while they were worshiping, so mom and dad could see and experience the Buddhist Temple!  Little A always loves seeing the Buddha statues and always goes as close as she can to the entrance!

Directly in front of the temple entrance was a beautiful and big pagoda.  It had at least ten layers and was surrounded by the flowers from the courtyard!  I think everyone loved the pagoda and how beautiful it was!

We walked around the grounds for a little longer, smelling the burning incense and hearing the chanting of the people and the banging of the drums.

We went to the side of the temple and there were beautiful paintings on the side of the temple along with stone statues!  The neat thing about the temples here are that all the people take their shoes off as a sign of respect before they enter the temple.  There were so many shoes on the side of the temple, showing the amount of devoted worshipers.

As we were getting ready to leave, we saw a huge paper lantern corner and tunnel!  The lanterns were of every color of the rainbow!  Usually temples only have lanterns during the lantern festival and Buddha's birthday, so it was such a treat to see the different colored lanterns!

We made sure that as we left the temple, we walked through the lantern tunnel in hopes of good luck in our years to come!