Hiroshima & Miyajima

Hiroshima & Miyajima
We tried to book on a train to Hiroshima but sadly they were fully booked this meant trying the unreserved carriages. This wasn't such an easy task this time as both trains were really busy. However we did get seats together after a couple of stops and the time went quickly but people were standing the whole way down the train so getting off with big bags was challenging. We weng to thd main storage area for bags and a nice lady took us to another baggage area below the train station which was half the price.

We spent about 5hrs roaming around the key sights of Hiroshima. Firstly we took a walk down to the Peace Gardens this was our only little bit of black tourism. This is where we saw the only structure standing following the atomic bomb 70 years ago which was sad to see. We then took a look around the castle gardens and museum/tower which has some English translations which we haven't seen in other places and only costs ¥370 each so it's a bargain.

We then transferred over to Miyajima it's really easy on the ferry as it's included on the JR Pass and you get to see the floating gate on route. Although it was a cloudy day we got some good evening pictures as we arrived about 6:30pm and stayed over night so it wasn't too busy.

We had a beer at the brewery overlooking the gate and across the water to the mainland but be warned it was £15 for 2 large beers so it's not cheap but the beer was good, the crazy thing is that last orders are about 7pm as it closes by 8pm!

We then took a wonder to find food about 7:30pm, as it was a Sunday most restaurants were closed and those that are open stop serving really early about 8pm so make sure you get in somewhere in plenty of time whatever day you're staying. We both ended up having a curry dish one veggie and the other with scallops which is the islands speciality. Apparently the Japanese eat curry on a Sunday so we were just following tradition - we think!

Oh look another temple in Kyoto

There's so much to choose from in Kyoto that after a day we felt like we'd visited so many temples and shrines around the city but we had barely started as they are really are everywhere and this isn't an exaggeration!

We decided to mix it up a bit and visited Nijo castle for ¥1000 each, the gardens are really nice & the castle has lots of original features, however to preserve the interior designs of each room you're not allowed to take pictures! I'd say it's worth a visit.
We then walked for about 30mins to the palace which is free to go in, the grounds are so big we couldn't work out where the entrance was. When we finally made it inside it was pretty quite so we got some good pictures of the buildings which are pretty impressive. You can tell it was the former ruling palace of the Emperor of Japan as it's so grand.

So that was our morning walk done, we then got a subway down to Kyoto station it cost us just ¥500 (£3.50) we then took a JR train across to Saga Arashiyama Station the whole journey took about 1 hour.

It's really easy to follow the crowds from the station and it takes about 10mins to reach the entrance for Tenryuri Temple. It costs ¥500 to go in the gardens and an extra ¥300 each to go into the buildings we did both. The Japanese Zen Gardens are really beautiful and you can see why it's a world heritage site. The interior is plain and open so the gardens nicely frame the landscape as a backdrop instead of lots of artistic designs inside the rooms.

You can meander up through the gardens to exit at the start of the uphill walk through the bamboo forest. As expected it was pretty busy even at 3pm!

We then decided to take the 30-40 minute walk to see the houses it was really quiet walking there and many of the shops were closing up but we got some good pictures and it was a nice stroll.

On our way back we just had enough time to visit Jojakkoji Temple I really liked this one there were fewer buildings but the zen garden was great it kept talking you up steps to different views of the town below.

We finished the day with a walk back down through the bamboo trees and along to the famous Togestsukyo Bridge, if you walk across the bridge there's a sweet shop which has loads of free samples which were needed after a really long day of walking and site seeing.

For dinner we found a tapas restaurant which was open later than a lot of restaurants and the lamb chops and beef were really tasty with a nice glass or two of red wine.