Sapporo: Odori and Susukino

The first day there we decided to hit up the main attractions in downtown Sapporo; the snow festival at Odori Park and the ice festival, Susukino. We wanted to see Odori both during the day and at night and had heard that Susukino was better in the dark (which luckily isn't too hard to do since the sun sets at 4:50pm). So...we got downtown around 10:30 am and started exploring.

First stop was Odori Park. The snow sculptures were huge and amazing! I couldn't believe how detailed they were. (And here is picture overload from the day!)

Rowan trying to do a peace sign with mittens on. haha

Who wants so chicken skin or pork tongue?!

Wouldn't be a Japanese festival without some anime

 Couldn't resist the smell of the warm churros as we walked by

 The little Okinawa exhibit...(tropical flowers in ice). Okinawa meets snow festival

 It was so interesting to get to see them still working on some of the sculptures

 The backpacks worked GREAT for being out all day. The kids could see when they were awake...and passed out hard when they got tired ;)

 Incredible

 After walking through the entire snow festival, we found a cute little pizza place where we could sit, relax and get warm for a little while. It was exactly what we needed for a little afternoon relaxation!

 After we had rested our legs and thawed out a little, we headed a few blocks down to Susukino, the ice festival. This one was a little bit more interactive, with ice sculptures you could sit on, etc. 

 Rowan LOVED watching himself "blow smoke". He thought it was SO cool that he could see his breath. It was pretty cute.

 And almost everywhere we went there were snow and ice slides, and he was in love. He thought they were the most fun thing ever! He was SO cute, and went down this one at least 20 times as we waited for it to get dark so we could see the sculptures illuminated.

 Last year at this time we were in Hawaii, soaking up the sun. This year we were in Hokkaido, the coldest we've been in YEARS (and the coldest our kids have ever experienced). Ice Aloha.

 Loved having Alexa there with us.

 And on our way back to the car, we walked through part of Odori again to see some of the illuminations. They were pretty amazing day and night!

 And we'd seen the chocolate bananas all day so decided we had to try them.

We were all pretty exhausted but it was so fun and we were excited for day 2!