Japan Day 2 - Kyoto

Wednesday, 27 December 2023

We started the day with another 4 train trips to get from Osaka to Kyoto - our home for the next 2 nights.  It was great to be able to dump our bags when we finally made it to or hotel.  From there we walked across to Nijo Castle and bought a day pass for the hop-on, hop off bus which we used throughout the day to take us from one highlight to the next. 

Our first stop was Kintano Shrine:

then we walked through streets and parks to get to the famous Golden Temple. It was very nice but pretty busy with tourists.

After icecreams decorated with gold leaf we still had a bit of time to kill while we waited for the bus again so we decided to walk to the next stop which was really interesting going through a mix of fancy streets, back alleys and parks.

We popped out on the main street just in time to see the bus go past so we had to chase it to next stop. After a bit of a rest we jumped off again at the not very silver Silver Palace which again featured lovely gardens around it:

Then it was back on the bus to get to the Yasuka Shrine and the old Kyoto district which was all very lovely but probably the busiest part of our day.

We spent quite a while exploring the quieter alley ways and streets as well as following the crowds up to the temples. There were quite a lot of people wearing full Kimono outfits as there were heaps of rent-a-kimono shops offering styling and photography.  It was a very pretty area but hard to get good photos of due to the crowds.

After more walking and another bus trip we made it back to our hotel by 5.30. After a quick rest we went back out and found a local place for dinner (we are on a bit of a roll finding good places to eat). 

Our observations so far are that the vending machines everywhere are great, the transport is straight forward but still hard to figure out as there are so many different train lines, and everyone is very polite and tidy. We're looking forward to another full day in Kyoto tomorrow.