Kyoto

We booked 4 nights in Kyoto to give us time to explore the city itself and also use it as a base for seeing some more of west Japan. Kyoto is quite a big city but very different from Tokyo, there are only a few tall buildings here and the style is very much old fashioned Japan rather than the crazy futuristic manga world of Tokyo. On our first day we went to the Imperial palace and its beautiful Japanese style gardens. The palace and other buildings around it are really simply from outside and unfortunately we cannot enter them. For lunch we had our "usual" boxes with unkown content from the supermarket - sometimes it even has some chairs, tables and a microwave to enjoy your meal there. Then we discovered a walking path by the river, an alley full of little pubs and restaurants called Pontocho and the main food market, Nishiki Market. At dusk we went to Gion, the geisha district where lots of people are dressed in traditional clothes (actually all around in Kyoto) kimono with all its accessories such as wooden sandals. There are lots of shops where you can rent a full outfit for the day. We ended the day in the tiniest Thai restaurant where 5 people were already sitting so the the place got full when we sat down too. First time to eat curry/noodles with chopstick only, success!Read more