Breakfast had amazing views over Kyoto from the top floor of the hotel – it’s very different to the Tokyo sky scape with no high rise towers, and a grid pattern for their roads.
At 9am we met our lovely guide for the day and we then went to meet our very jolly driver for a day of site seeing.
I’ll not be able to remember everything or get the details correct, but we started at Arashiyama and saw the bridge and a garden and did the very impressive bamboo forest walk. We saw a gorgeous little moss garden at the Gio-ji Temple and another temple which had 1200 carved statues all with different expressions/doing different things. We visited a rock garden (gravel and 15 rocks) in the Ryoanji Temple and the Zen temple in Zen temple in Kinkakuji.
Finally we went for a wander round the Geisha district and learnt about the history and current status of this profession.
Somewhere along the way we stopped for lunch at a lovel Japanese dinner and we saw a few other temples too.
After some admin back at the hotel we headed out to do our washing at a travellers laundromat, which was also an internet cafe where you could rent a private room by the hour (each was sparce except a desk and chair in the room). It was an interesting place to spend an hour.
We droped our newly washed and dried clothes at home then wandered in to town for some food. most of the shops/restaurants were closed by this time so I’m sorry to say we resorted to McDonalds.
