· Time for a restKyoto, Japan · 9th Feb 2008 · Posted by Chris
Before arriving in Kyoto we had arranged to stay in another of the famous Japanese ryokan (Japanese inn, for those who haven't been reading about our travels so far!). It was called Ryokan Hinomoto and turned out to be really nice, complete with the typical helpful and friendly staff. Our room was basic but huge so we could throw our stuff around without tripping over it in the night. The room had its own heating and we had our own sink - useful when all the other facilities are shared. We were totally used to shared facilities by now but it was spotlessly clean - we'd recommend it to anyone coming to Kyoto for sure.
We'd read about the walking tours in our trusty Lonely Planet guide so we looked for a good one and decided to give it a go. We found the start of the walk and set about following the route described in our book. We looked around and thought "Geeze, Lonely Planet has dropped the ball on this one" - we couldn't find any of the sights we were supposed to look out for. It didn't take us long to figure out that we had managed to find the END Of the walking route and were trying to follow it the wrong way! Shaaaaaaaaaame! I'll blame this one on Annie - finally we've had our share of navigational blunders hehe. :) We did find a MASSIVE temple complex which was really nice to walk around in the cold though.
Kyoto was one of the stops in Japan where we had plans to do touristy things but in the end we kinda couldn't be bothered. We've been travelling for a couple of months now and eventually decided that we wouldn't deliberately seek out tourist attractions. To keep it low-key we decided to hire bikes and go for a jaunt around the city but our plans were foiled by a heavy overnight snowfall! It was seriously cold so instead we rugged up in every piece of winter clothing we had with us and went walking in search of shopping!
Ahhh yes, the shopping. You could quite easily break the bank in Kyoto, something we found out pretty quick. Nobody wants to read about shopping though so that's all I'll say about that.
Kyoto was definitely a nice rest stop for us so we'll get back into writing about more interesting stuff over the next couple of posts, I promise. Next stop - Kobe to hang out with Becky! Woohoo!
We'd read about the walking tours in our trusty Lonely Planet guide so we looked for a good one and decided to give it a go. We found the start of the walk and set about following the route described in our book. We looked around and thought "Geeze, Lonely Planet has dropped the ball on this one" - we couldn't find any of the sights we were supposed to look out for. It didn't take us long to figure out that we had managed to find the END Of the walking route and were trying to follow it the wrong way! Shaaaaaaaaaame! I'll blame this one on Annie - finally we've had our share of navigational blunders hehe. :) We did find a MASSIVE temple complex which was really nice to walk around in the cold though.
Kyoto was one of the stops in Japan where we had plans to do touristy things but in the end we kinda couldn't be bothered. We've been travelling for a couple of months now and eventually decided that we wouldn't deliberately seek out tourist attractions. To keep it low-key we decided to hire bikes and go for a jaunt around the city but our plans were foiled by a heavy overnight snowfall! It was seriously cold so instead we rugged up in every piece of winter clothing we had with us and went walking in search of shopping!
Ahhh yes, the shopping. You could quite easily break the bank in Kyoto, something we found out pretty quick. Nobody wants to read about shopping though so that's all I'll say about that.
Kyoto was definitely a nice rest stop for us so we'll get back into writing about more interesting stuff over the next couple of posts, I promise. Next stop - Kobe to hang out with Becky! Woohoo!
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