To be fair, we haven’t spent much time exploring Tokyo; we’ve mainly used it as a resting point so far. We stayed there the first night and I was exhausted from all the travel. We spent our second day traveling to/from Kawazu, and were both exhausted by he end of the day. Dinner at the hotel restaurant was all we could handle. We did think about trying to go out to dinner somewhere the second night, but it seemed like there weren’t many options in the area of our hotel….Hence the hotel restaurant again, even though it was mediocre.
Yesterday we took the train from Tokyo to Kyoto. We wanted to give ourselves lots of time, so we got tickets on the noon Shinkasen Express. Everything took less time than we expected, so we ended up with lots of waiting around time, followed by a 2h 40 minute train ride. Once we got checked in to our hotel and dropped off our bags, we went out for a walk. We had only to cross the street and we were in a market area full of shops and restaurants. People everywhere. A shrine tucked away in the middle of it all. It was all so Japanese.
We picked up a bus pass and this morning we went out to see some of the sights. We went to the Imperial Palace Park.We ended up going in the wrong entrance, then going in exactly the wrong direction (none of the tourist information is very clear on this) so we used quite a bit of time and didn’t see what we went there to see, but it is a nice park so it was still enjoyable. We eventually figured out where we needed to go and purchased tickets fo a tour on Wednesday morning.
Then we wandered around and ended up in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch. It was not fancy, but it was pretty good.
After lunch we went to Nijo Castle, and then to Fushimi-Inari-Taisha which was my favorite part of the day. Would have liked to spend more time there, but it was late afternoon by then and Cory was just about done in. We did a lot of walking today.
We traveled back to Sanjo dori area, where our hotel is, and started looking for a place to eat.That is actually proving to be a challenge. We walk around and look at the pictures and/or plastic models of menu offerings, sometimes with English descriptions, and that’s all we have to go on. Tonight we ended up at a brew pub called Asahi. I wanted salad and Cory wanted beer and this place looked promising. Turned out to be perfect. The beer was some of the best I’ve ever had and the food was really good.
Now tired out – Cory is asleep in his chair right now. My feet hurt. More travelling around tomorrow, so looking forward to sleep. This morning I actually felt pretty normal, for the first time since I got here. I went to bed at 9 last night because I was so exhausted, I woke up once around 5 am and was afraid I wouldn’t get back to sleep….next thing I knew it was 8:20. I felt pretty good all day, so I think I’ve adjusted. I hope.
Tomorrow Himeji and possibly Okayama.