Osaka

After a relaxing slow start, including our infamous convenience store breakfast, we headed to Kyoto Station for a Shinkansen to Osaka. The trip took a whole 13 minutes. When we arrived we dropped our bags off at our apartment in Shinsaibashi and made our way to Osaka Castle. Seems pretty straight forward and getting to the apartment was no issue. We opened the first glass door (push to open), entered a pin code at the next glass door and made it in to the lobby! Then we had to check in by way of iPad which included taking selfies of ourselves from waist height (attractive). We finished all of that, were given our room number and we were successfully checked in. But the key? Our escape room training kicked in - there were lock boxes to the left with apartment numbers on them, each requiring a 4 digit pin code... Not the original door pin code and not our unit number. Perplexed, we considered our options and went through the check in process again to find a page with a scroll bar we had missed! We put the code in and retrieved our key. After successfully escaping (aka finding our unit) we headed to lunch - B spotted an okonomiyaki restaurant right around the corner from our AirBNB. As we strolled to the Castle from the nearest metro station, the wind picked up. Icy icy wind. Once inside the castle we headed for the 8th floor to see the view from the top. It was quite windy! We then looked at the exhibits on each floor on the way down - floors 7-5 were definitely the best, I'm not sure what happened to the rest, it seemed a bit random. We strolled the long way back to the metro station, passing the plum blossoms. Feeling chilled to the bone, we strolled right into Starbucks in the park. Hot chocolate for B and a Sakura (cherry blossom) latte for me. Feeling warm, we headed back to the apartment as it was after 5pm. We settled in and headed out for dinner at about 6:45pm for ramen from ippudo. It was definitely ramen weather and it hit the spot. We've got a shopping street right near our AirBNB so we had a quick look in Daiso on our way back, i think I'll need some gloves (B has some) and B will need a scarf...Read more