Osaka Castle

Met up with our group in the lobby - quite a large group of nearly 40 people (probably too large but we shall see) First stop was Osaka Castle built in the 16th century set amongst attractive gardens. Well, it was first built in the 16th Century but damaged when lightning struck stored gunpowder. Centuries of neglect and the run-down castle was eventually destroyed during WW2 when the US bombed arsenal holdings. It has since been rebuilt as an exact copy - only completed about 25 years ago - and serves as a museum.

We then continued to the shopping district known as Dōtonbori famous for its street food and shopping plus a famous neon sign of Glico running man. Not sure what the attraction of this sign was but it was interesting to explore some of the unusual shops in the area and we tried some the local dishes such as yukisoba (a fried noodle dish) and okonomiyaki (a savoury pancake). Both excellent choices!

We spent far too long at this free time stop (almost 4 hours) in my opinion as we still had to drive to Kyoto for more activities - but I'll cover Kyoto in the next post.Read more