Nara

One place that I had been wanting to go for awhile now was Nara. It isn't far from Osaka or Kyoto, but we didn't have time during our Kyoto trip so we decided to make it happen this time. Nara is known for having deer roaming the streets, and that part did not disappoint. We took the train from Osaka Monday morning and just walked around Nara Park (which is enormous!) for the morning. It was perfect, so beautiful and fun. 

 We were greeted by deer from the time we stepped foot in the park!

We stopped for a diaper change at this spot...the landscape totally reminded me of a Kentucky horse farm...but deer were roaming the green hills instead of horses. All that was missing were the white fences!

Rowan collected a bunch of pinecones (he's sort of obsessed with pinecones-was VERY sad to learn we hadn't brought them on the plane home with us). He named them "Mike, Lex and Row" (Alexa and her husband).

We got the VERY beginnings of the fall colors here. It would probably be even more beautiful now, but we also loved all the green so I was not disappointed. This park was gorgeous.

 Deer family selfie. Not sure why Rowan is choking Grant :)

After we made it through the main part of the park, we turned to do another little loop. This adorable little snack shack totally random in the middle of what felt like a forest.

Boden was excited about it :)

Finally, we walked down several streets with these pillars (some of which were lanterns) with cool green moss growing all over them...

And we ended at this deer washing station. I still am not sure of the significance of these (I should find out considering we've "washed" in quite a few of them now on our trips to mainland. Rowan loved filling the cup from the "waterfall" and "dump"ing it out.

Nara was fun and beautiful and did not disappoint. We took the train back to Osaka in the mid afternoon and decided to do some shopping in Osaka. I had been extremely successful at the H&M there last time and was excited to see if they had anything I couldn't pass up this time ;) -I found a few things but overall was less impressed.

While walking through Osaka, we found this delicious popcorn place. Apparently it is big in Chicago. I don't love popcorn in general, but this was amazing. We got a mix of cheese and caramel corn. So delicious. Rowan loved it too, but while we were shopping was running around in crazy circles and made himself throw up from getting dizzy! We loves to tell them story of how he threw up "poppy corn" :)

 As we walked in our hotel room at the end of the day (completely worn out and famished), I looked at my fitbit and it read 20,000 steps. Pretty impressive day (almost 10 miles!) And, Grant had a flip flop that had broken while we were out, so he had to buy super thin bottomed shower type shoes which he had worn the entire day. I was wearing dark leather flip flops and because we had encountered some rain that day, my feet were stained dark brown...I couldn't even wash it all of the way off! Made me feel better about eating that bag of McDonalds we had brought back to the hotel to eat for dinner with us :)