obsessed with japan - hida folk village, kyoto, hakodate, sapporo, tokyo - 2

Off to Kyoto from Takayama

It is pretty challenging to wake up very early morning in a nice cold weather while you were having a cozy warm softy sleep. Even though it was a budget hotel, with very small room though, we were still able to get that kind of feeling , at least for us. The better thing was taking the train in early morning. It wasn't crowded at all, and there were only us in the entire truck. With breathtaking scenery and picturesque view along the way, every minute we spent on the train was really worth it.

##Kyoto

We were expecting so so much when we get there. Because, you know, it is Kyoto, the ancient city with lots of interesting shrines and temples. Huge history lays in Kyoto.

This was the list we planned for our 3 nights trip in Kyoto

• Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine
• Arashiyama (Bamboo forest)
• Nishiki food market
• Kiyomizu Dera Temple
• Gion
• Nijo-jo castle

Before I planned to include Kyoto in this trip, I read somewhere that Kyoto is over touristed city. I didn't understand at the beginning and planned it anyway. I realized when we went to the first place from our list. We weren't able to get into the train easily and the place with packed with so many tourists, finally we decided to come back within going in further more.

Crowd at Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine entrance

No way to move forward with a toddler, we decided to go to Gion. It was very challenging to get out of that crowd and get back into the train. We went to Kyoto station and there from the bus interchange, we took a bus to get to Gion.

If you really love this kind of Japanese architecture, Kyoto is the best place to visit. But, they don't really have a lot of places to sit. And guess what, Japanese don't go easy on kids. They won't give up their seats for people traveling with kids or to the kids. Think twice if you plan to use bus to go around the city.

I can’t recall where we had our lunch that day, but for dinner, we went to Izakaya restaurant which was very near to the Kyoto train station. The food there was really nice, and the price wqs reasonable. Trust me, we don't choose expensive restaurants because we were always on budget.

The next day, we went to the bamboo forest. We wanted to avoid the big crowd like yesterday, so we went there very early. We were so early that they haven't even opened yet.

The truth was we went to a wrong place. When we searched Bamboo forest in Google Map, it was showing that that was the one. Then, we asked around some local people there to confirm, it was the wrong place. The effort wasn't wasted anyway. That place was nice too. But, we had to wait like another two more hour to go inside, we finally decided to go to another place, Nijo-jo castle.

Nishiki food market is about 10 bus stops from the castle.

Yes, that's about it in Kyoto. It was surely disappointing that we couldn't explore as we wanted.

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