Tateshina Shinyu Onsen ♨️ 🛁 😀

It was a later start at 10am to walk over to the Matsumoto Castle. No shoes and lots of very steep "stairs" to ascend up the six levels of this amazingly preserved site. The "current structures date from 1594; 431 years ago!"
https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/eng/info

Lunch was at 7-Eleven. We had fun making a smoothie. The staff got a little flustered with us. We learned two things through the language barrier... Don't blend the smoothie before paying. Don't eat a popsicle in the store. 🙃

After the Castle adventure we zipped onto the Venus-Line in the Nagano Prefecture. As our tour guide book describes it:
"...riding into the mountains east of Matsumoto, including the legendary Venus Line—one of Japan’s moststunning riding routes. This area offers a mix of tight turns, sweeping bends, and breathtakingpanoramic views of the Japanese Alps stretching across the valley below. "

We stopped by the Utsukushigahara open-air museum. To stretch our legs. We didn't have enough time to enjoy the sculptures, but I would definitely go back and make a an afternoon of it!
https://www.utsukushi-oam.jp/mp/english

Our evening accomodation in Tateshina was the fanciest Ryokan and onsen of the trip. The three of us slipped into the more comfortable provided "pj's" for the evening dinner. Our kaiseki dinner offering was creative and delicious! "Kaiseki is said to date back to the 16th century, when tea master Sen-no-Rikyu introduced an austere version of the cuisine to accompany the tea ceremony. In practice, modern kaiseki is actually a style of cooking and food presentation that evolved over the last few centuries, bringing together a wide variety of high-end cooking techniques, presentation methods and ingredients. The best description of kaiseki is simply “Japanese haute cuisine,” that is, elegant food eaten on special occasions."
https://www.tateshina-shinyu.com/en/Read more