京都
After dropping our bags off at our strange but decent enough hotel we hit the sightseeing tour by taking the bus to Kiyomizudera, the big temple with the big stage made of wood and no nails, which I had seen on the November trip as well. While waiting for Daan we decided to go and have lunch, an ice cream, went shopping a bit, saw some (real?) geisha and then finally Daan came so we could climb up to the temple.
The view from there is awesome, no kidding. Luuk did the walk of love, like I did when I was there. Lucky for him there were a LOT less people this time. By this time it was getting late and we decided to pick a restaurant from this magazine we had gotten from tourist information. We picked a yaki-niku (sort of bbq-ing) restaurant, and boy were we hungry by the time we got there, we had such trouble finding it! It’s an all you can eat deal for 2 hours, and they forget to remind you not to STUFF yourself right at the start haha. We ordered a sukiyaki (cooking in water) and yaki-niku (grill) combo and with this you could order as much meat, vegetables and noodles as you wanted. I really don’t want to think about how much meat was eaten that night, it’s really quite revolting. And I must stress that this was mostly on the hands of Luuk and Daan, my portion was quite decent I thought haha. In the end it was well worth the chagrin and we went back to the hotel quite satisfied.
Day 2 in Kyoto was full of more exciting stuff like going to Heian shrine where there is a beautiful big Japanese garden and apparently there was also a charity run or something,
there were lots of people getting ready to run towards the HUUUUGE torii that is part of the shrine complex. We also saw a Japanese wedding party in the garden, very nice in their traditional clothes. Next up we searched our way to Nijo-castle, the castle with the squeaky “nightingale” floors, which has become one of Luuk’s favourites I think :). Next item on the itinerary was kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion where we wanted to get bottles of Japanese sake with gold in it which I had seen the last time I visited Kyoto. Unfortunately there was no sake to be seen. Instead we were offered pink tea with gold in it, which was revolting. If you ever go there, don’t drink the tea. *shiver*.
Lucky for us there just happened to be the Kyoto lantern festival going on that night. We were just in time for a maiko (geisha-in-training) dance, a terrible accapela performance and some beautifully lit shrines and temples making a pleasant nigh-time stroll despite the drizzling rain. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to do anything else after that. We were really quite tired too, so after a quick bite to eat and a few drinks at the Kyoto Za Watami (chain izakaya, also one in Nagasaki) it was back to bed again.
After dropping our bags off at our strange but decent enough hotel we hit the sightseeing tour by taking the bus to Kiyomizudera, the big temple with the big stage made of wood and no nails, which I had seen on the November trip as well. While waiting for Daan we decided to go and have lunch, an ice cream, went shopping a bit, saw some (real?) geisha and then finally Daan came so we could climb up to the temple. 
The view from there is awesome, no kidding. Luuk did the walk of love, like I did when I was there. Lucky for him there were a LOT less people this time. By this time it was getting late and we decided to pick a restaurant from this magazine we had gotten from tourist information. We picked a yaki-niku (sort of bbq-ing) restaurant, and boy were we hungry by the time we got there, we had such trouble finding it! It’s an all you can eat deal for 2 hours, and they forget to remind you not to STUFF yourself right at the start haha. We ordered a sukiyaki (cooking in water) and yaki-niku (grill) combo and with this you could order as much meat, vegetables and noodles as you wanted. I really don’t want to think about how much meat was eaten that night, it’s really quite revolting. And I must stress that this was mostly on the hands of Luuk and Daan, my portion was quite decent I thought haha. In the end it was well worth the chagrin and we went back to the hotel quite satisfied.
Day 2 in Kyoto was full of more exciting stuff like going to Heian shrine where there is a beautiful big Japanese garden and apparently there was also a charity run or something, 
there were lots of people getting ready to run towards the HUUUUGE torii that is part of the shrine complex. We also saw a Japanese wedding party in the garden, very nice in their traditional clothes. Next up we searched our way to Nijo-castle, the castle with the squeaky “nightingale” floors, which has become one of Luuk’s favourites I think :). Next item on the itinerary was kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion where we wanted to get bottles of Japanese sake with gold in it which I had seen the last time I visited Kyoto. Unfortunately there was no sake to be seen. Instead we were offered pink tea with gold in it, which was revolting. If you ever go there, don’t drink the tea. *shiver*. 
Lucky for us there just happened to be the Kyoto lantern festival going on that night. We were just in time for a maiko (geisha-in-training) dance, a terrible accapela performance and some beautifully lit shrines and temples making a pleasant nigh-time stroll despite the drizzling rain. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to do anything else after that. We were really quite tired too, so after a quick bite to eat and a few drinks at the Kyoto Za Watami (chain izakaya, also one in Nagasaki) it was back to bed again.
2 comments:
Our hotel 'Costa del sol' was quite freezing with badly working airco! I think they'd better change their name to 'Antartica' :)
awesome pictures, even though I've seen most of them already they're still cool to see.
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