Gloomy castle days

We've definitely lost our sunny, spring-time weather here in Osaka but we didn't let the thundery-looking clouds stop us from venturing into the city. We managed to navigate the windy streets with a very poor map and eventually found Osaka Castle, one of the most beautifully decorated buildings we have seen so far. We had a lovely stroll through the grounds of the castle with it's wide moats, lined with blooming cherry blossom trees. If it had been glorious sunshine we would definitely of seen more Japanese girls dressed in kimonos coming to have pictures with the cherry blossom, something we have seen very often so far. We were excited to go inside the castle and after queuing in a rather long line we made it inside but it wasn't at all what we expected. Instead of great halls and stone walls with coats of arms we entered what felt like a newly built gallery or museum. It was hard to even remember that you are inside a castle when everything was so modern and newly built. There were 8 floors and we headed up the flights of stair, a tough climb, to the top first to get 360 views of the city. The other floors had information on the castle and families who were involved with all the events that happened there. After a while the mammoth of information was quite overwhelming so we decided to leave as we got down to floor 2. We spent the rest of the day walking back and visiting our favourite supermarket before eating tea and watching the last film we rented. Despite the weather it was a pretty adventurous day trip in Osaka.Read more