Kyoto, Nara, Osaka Day 2

Day 2 Kyoto

Our second day in Kyoto was long and wonderful.  We were exhausted by then end.  It involved a lot of taxis, bus rides and walking up two mountains. After a Family Mart breakfast we hopped on a bus and headed towards the Golden Pavilion.  The buses in Kyoto are extremely tourist friendly.  I think we got on one going the wrong direction once.   We arrived right around the time the Golden Pavilion opened.  There were several other tourists there.  Ely seemed to enjoy this spot.  It was one of my picks and ended up being as beautiful as I imagined. 

This is one of my favorite series of Ely and Sean. 

After the Golden Pavilion we took a taxi to the bamboo forest to save time.  It was expensive, but when you have little ones it was totally worth it.  We were warned by a friend that the bamboo forest is overrated.  I'm glad they told us, we walked in, took some pictures and walked out.   It's incredibly full of tourists, the picture that has no people in it, is a marked off path that I'm pretty sure you have to pay money to take a ride through.  It's nice and I'm sure it was beautiful 100's of years ago, but I'm glad we didn't spend more than a few minutes here.  

The street between the Bamboo Forest and the Monkeys was heavily populated.  We were looking for an affordable place to eat lunch, when I saw the word "cafe"  I fell for what I thought was an establishment that serves food while you get to admire owls.  No food, just owls, which was ok because we needed the break.  

This was my favorite part of the day.  It was absolutely beautiful to come upon.  

My children the entire trip.  If there was dirt, they would sit down, play it in.  There was one time when Ely literally washed her face with it. They looked like they had been camping 90% of this trip.  

I love this picture with my babies.   

We had to go on a small hike to see the monkey's.  We were happy to take a break and let Ely and Koa play at a play ground on the way up.  Near the zip line, we saw a monkey in the trees and then had him head up the hill.  Ely followed him the whole way.  

 After a trip back to our hotel room, we took a taxi to the Torri Gates, Fushimi Inari-Taisha.  This was another place that is heavily populated with tourists, the farther you get up the mountain there are less and less people.  We made it to the summit.  I was so worn by the end of this day, and completely and utterly wished I had worn stereotypical ugly, white sneakers.  

Loved these beautiful purple blooms.

 Orange trees

I didn't want to pack heavy shoes so we could carry on all of our bags on the airplane and wanted something easy slip on and off during security.  Pack the shoes. Wear the shoes.  If you are going to do the Torri Gates and the Monkeys especially in the same day, bring decent shoes. Shortly after this I took off my sandals and walked barefoot. 

The summit, Sean is really into making it to the tops of mountains.  This was a cool moment for him. 

After this I handed him the baby, who he wore, and then also carried Ely because we were all done. 

Worth it.

Kyoto, Nara, Osaka- Kyoto Day 1

Between Sean building a new computer, my old computer not working, our pictures not uploading it's been a while before we have been able to get photos up.  This is the first day of our mainland trip.  I'm hoping to get photos up of our trip to Fukuoka someday and photos from when we had Sean's mom visit.  Both were nice experiences and I want my kids to go back and read about them when they get older. 

Going on this adventure was a LOT of work with little ones.  I completely understand why people just go on repetitive theme park trips over and over again now.  I think in the future things may be different because Koa will be walking.  He still needed to be carried everywhere but was so squirmy and wanted to get down and crawl and attempt walking.  Now that it's over, I look back and think about how neat it was, but that doesn't mean we didn't have some rough moments.  This was our first day in Kyoto.  We took the train straight there from the airport. There were cherry blossoms blooming everywhere and it was so beautiful!

Ely was going stir crazy so we walked 45 minutes to go get dinner. On our way there we saw this beautiful sunset by Nijo Castle.  I peaked inside the gates and saw some gorgeous Cherry Blossom trees.  There was an evening event that we went to later that night after dinner. 

Fire Ramen where they set your bowl of ramen on fire.   Poor Koa was so scared. He was happy to eat the noodles afterwards.  Just FYI for families thinking of going.  The wait is super long, and every person that takes up a seat has to buy a bowl of ramen, no sharing.  So Ely had to buy her own bowl and it was around 1,500 Yen. They recorded the whole experience and then insisted we take our photos like this.  

Nijo Castle night time display.  So gorgeous.  Pictures don't do it justice. 

Our Sleeping arrangements.  Koa woke up in the middle of the night and thought it was so cool we were all on the floor together.  He crawled all over us for a while and then went back to sleep.  Out of all the places we stayed at in mainland Japan, these were probably the most comfortable beds.  This was in interesting hotel.  We had to share a bathroom and shower with everyone else staying there.