One morning, near our hotel, as we came up from the passageway under the street, a procession of Korean guards was marching past us. Of course, we immediately pulled out our cameras and started snapping photos.

As they kept marching, we did what I'm sure anyone in our place would do...we followed them. Followed them down the street, through the intersection, around the corner, and kept going. We wondered a few times if maybe we should stop following them, but were too curious what was going on. I mean how often do you see a parade of Korean guards with flags and drums?

So when the procession came to the belfry (an impressive looking building that had caught our attention on day 1), we waited to see what would happen next. We were confused when other non-guard people started going into the belfry, but when one very important looking guard motioned for us to go in too, we quickly went inside before he changed his mind.

Upstairs, inside the belfry, there was a whole bell ringing ceremony, interesting to watch, though we didn't quite follow. We managed to take a few pictures at the end with some of the guards, and left feeling lucky to have caught this event and rather proud of ourselves for having continued to follow (stalk) the guards around the city.

Outside the belfry, I was a bit disappointed to see a sign advertising this daily bell ringing ceremony for tourists. Our luck at finding this unique, special event, was actually not so much luck, and instead was the Visit Korea team doing a good job at promoting the culture of the city. Oh well, it was still cool.

Flip Flops & Passports