I originally intended to write Kyoto together with Himeji, however I eventually decided that the length of Kyoto deserves its own post. Thus, we arrived at Kyoto from Kobe at around 3 pm, a perfect time to check in to the hotel. Our hotel was Kyoto Tower Hotel Annex, by the way, around 10 minutes walk from JR Kyoto station.
We began our journey by visiting Kyoto Imperial Palace. The original agenda was to visit Nijo castle beforehand actually, however it was already closed because we arrived there a little too late. So we just continued our plan to the Imperial Palace.
Touring inside the Palace was only accessible through a guided tour that you need to reserve in advance. We had decided that we don’t want to go inside so we just explored the castle grounds and the gardens, which was very beautiful with the sakura trees all in full bloom.
We continued the journey to the Nishiki market. This famous area was essentially similar to Dotonbori in Osaka or Hondori in Hiroshima. There were stores selling street foods, souvenirs and stuff, a must visit for tourists.
We had our dinner there and continued our walk to Gion. Gion was famous as place for high class restaurants with maiko or geisha, sadly we didn’t see any of them on the streets. The tea houses and restaurants there had a really steep price though. Apart from the nice atmosphere at night, there was nothing we could do (or buy) at Gion.
Done with the first day, we were back to the hotel through JR Kyoto station and I snapped this two pictures of Kyoto Tower and the station.
Second day in Kyoto. We originally planned the most outrageous, 8-km walk from Kiyomizudera, through various temples and the Philosopher walk, and finishing at Ginkaku-ji; continued with bus journey to Kinkaku-ji, Arashiyama, and Fushimi Inari. Unfortunately this plan had to be adjusted a lot because of rain on that day.
We decided to cut most of the walking route and took bus directly to Nanzen-ji, which was the beginning of the Philosopher’s path. However, it seemed that we alighted too early. According to the map Nanzen-ji was not that far from our spot though so we decided to just walk over it in the rain. Hey, yolo right?
The philosopher walk was 1.8 km long, and it was quite an exercise! It was ended in Ginkaku-ji, and we reached around lunch time, that makes it very crowded there. To be honest I felt that Ginkaku-ji was a little bit disappointing. The temple grounds were relatively small, and although the scenery was nice, that was pretty much it.
From Ginkaku-ji to Kinkaku-ji we took another bus ride, and we were greeted with another huge crowd. Certainly the crowd also prefer the prettier Kinkaku-ji rather than Ginkaku-ji, or was it just me? Haha.
It was already around 3-4 pm and we still have Arashiyama and Fushimi Inari in the agenda (!) thus we hastily moved ourselves to Tenryu-ji temple, as the famous bamboo groves of Arashiyama was accessible from there.
We got lost in navigating our way through and out of the bamboo forest, and to make it worse, my camera battery was running out and I foolishly left my backup at the hotel.
We ended up visiting Fushimi Inari too however the sun was already down and it was already very dark outside and it started to get cold and windy. Which was quite regrettable because Fushimi Inari seemed to be one of the must-visit attraction in Kyoto! I guess I should go there again next time.
I will end this post with our ambitious Kyoto plan plotted on Google map 😀
Go to Part 7 – Nara and Hakone >>>
1 comment