I think day 3 was probably my favorite...and it just happened to be our only "free" day! The one thing I knew I wanted to see before we arrived in Kyoto was the 1000 Torii gates. I had seen it in pictures and in the movie "Memoires of a Geisha" (which our neighbor Alli had us watch before we went)...so we started day 3 there. I was already excited but it truly exceeded my expectations!
Ringing the bell at the entrance. This temple was a different experience too, because it is an actual working temple, not just set up for tourism. We were able to see them praying and working in the temple which was interesting.
And here is an overload of pictures as we walked through all the gates! I had no idea that there were going to be SO many gates there. It is an entire long hike through a beautiful area with these bright orange gates to contrast the greenery around. It was awesome.
One of my favorite photos of the trip
"Umm...why are you walking through my picture?!"
And by this point in the trip, we came to realize that it was the norm to have people swarm and take pictures whenever we set Rowan down to get pics of him. I thought he got a lot of attention in Okinawa, but being on Mainland brought it to an entirely new level. I can't even count how many people's vacation pictures this kid is going to be in!
One the way out we found this man selling some delicious dried fruit. I was just excited to find someone selling "normal" food...and it was SO good! I filled up with quite the assortment :)
After lunch, we headed to Imperial Palace (didn't actually go to the palace but walked around the gorgeous park surrounding it). There were tons of cherry trees blooming everywhere! Rowan loved playing on the fence...and I freaked out a little while taking pictures and Grant told me to calm down :)
And as I snapped these pictures, a group collected around me.. Like I said, this had grown to be the norm, but this picture gives you an idea just how hilarious it was!
And then occasionally we'd get people to take a picture of the 3 of us...so glad we got some cute ones like this. Then, when they were done, they would ask us to take a picture of them, and inevitably each time, they would hold out their hands and ask to hold Rowan in their picture. I just think the idea of it is hilarious. What are they going to tell their friends when showing them vacation pictures?! So, Rowan made it into several family photos (probably as many as he took with us, his real family :)
We then headed downtown to walk through Nishiki Market and find some good sushi...but when we got to sushi, we realized it wasn't really our style of sushi. I like a good roll, but these were mostly weird sashimi pieces. So...we found a CocoCurry and enjoyed that instead.
Rowan had his usual bottle and then enjoyed curry with us :)
We walked through the market and saw some truly disgusting looking food...
Then got some more soft serve to share as we walked along the river back to our hotel with the cherry trees lit and lanterns along the road. Cherry blossoms are a HUGE deal in Japan and there are several areas in town where they are lit at night, including this river. It was so pretty! It was a really fun street too, full of awesome looking restaurants and shops, somewhere I would explore if we ever make it back to Kyoto.
We were all exhausted by the end of the day, having walked probably close to 8 miles or so. It was our last night in the hotel and Rowan finally figured out how to fall asleep with us there, and we all figured out how to share the bed together. It worked out well, but we were definitely ready to head home and sleep in our own beds the next night!
Wow! Beautiful!
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