Japan - Kyoto - Day 7

- Wednesday, October 7th 2015 -

We bid our farewell to Hakone today, making our way to Kyoto.  Once again using the Hakone Free pass and a bus, we arrived back to Odawara Station.  We took the Shinkansen Hikari, which is apparently a very very fast train, the ride being just over two hours long.  I even napped a bit on the ride, as most of the time we were in cities and watching out the windows there really tires your eyes.

While leaving Hakone though, and first boarding the train, you could see Mount Fuji beautifully.  The skies cleared up and the weather got warmer again. The train passed through many tunnels, leaving the mountainous scenery behind for awhile.  Finding our hotel was super easy, but we arrived at 1pm and check in wasn't until 2.  So, we left our luggage behind with the very helpful staff and went to find lunch.

Lacking my usual insane sweet tooth, I passed up the Apple Custard pastry displayed on the right of this picture and got a chicken breast massive sandwich.  Food was delicious and we had chocolate milk with icecream on it as our drinks.  They even give free toasted bread out with a ordered drink, and that was tasty as well!  Emma getting her usual cola, and I went for a delicious Vietnamese cinnamon coffee with whipped cream on top.

The location of this hotel, the Daiwa Roynet Hotel was amazing.  There was a Lawsons, 7-11, and the train station within a stones throw of where we were at!  Our forwarded luggage was there waiting for us so when we came back after lunch and got checked in, everything was ready for us!  Emma had done a quick outfit change, as Hakone had been cold and Kyoto was very toasty.  With still a few hours of daylight left, we pulled open the map and chose a place that was 'close'.

Well.  Kyoto maps are deceiving, what looks close is actually pretty far.  And I'm directionally  challenged.  We decided to go to the Nijo Castle. Which should have been "Just up the road".  We took a rather indirect route, and made a note that this was why there were buses.  We still didn't end up really braving buses.  Probably not a bad decision since it's not like we hadn't walked a lot yet that day, and there's a flat fare fee of 260 yen per ride.  Adds up when you're not going far, which unfortunately, we often didn't go far (we had to just change stations or whatnot).

Anyway.  We arrived about an hour before closing time, and as we walked in they were doing last call for the actual castle entry.  So we made a B-line for that and got to explore the very pretty little castle.  Information was bilingual, if not trilingual most of the time so we could read and find out what things were about, unfortunately photography wasn't allowed inside of the castle.

The details around the castle were breath taking. This decorating one of the arch ways to get into the grounds.

Above is the entryway to the castle that you can't photograph inside of.

Follow the cut for the gardens



Continuing on after the castle, we had the gardens which did allow photos.

Photospam!

Finally put my camera into manual and started getting photos I liked.

                                            Outfits of the day!  Notice my incredibly classy socks.

Emma was getting used to me leaving her for the restroom by now.  This time I snuck up on her while she was chasing butterflies.  Daw.

A lot of buildings around here were reconstructed, so many Japanese things burn down!

Viewpoint!

I walked sideways down these steps, made much better progress than normal walking.

TREES

Leaving~

 Again, I can't recall what we ate for dinner that night, but I'm sure it was something we wandered around and found.  Perhaps this was the Ramen night that I couldn't figure out?  No...I'm pretty sure that was later.   Maybe Emma will comment because she's amazing.  Er, to remind me.

After that we called it a night, finding food and settling down.  Showers, unpacking, and sorting ourselves.  Our room was good sized and easy to find. Unlike the hotel in Tokyo, this one wasn't under reconstruction so that was very nice.  The buffet breakfast in the morning sounded exciting, with some 30+ choices. 


Edited to add note:
I wish I remembered where I was when Emma and I were walking down a city path at night (i think it was Tokyo?) and we walked down a mob of teenagers.  All these teenagers were offering us CD's, flyers, all this stuff.  We ended up not really taking much but it was kinda cool..