Kyoto - Sunday, October 28



After walking 6.8 miles yesterday in occasional showers, we set off on another tour of Kyoto this time to beautiful sunshine. We walked to the Kyoto Train Station and with the help of a friendly station employee purchased round-trip tickets on the local train to Arashiyama & Sagano in the northwestern outskirts of Kyoto. We wanted to see some Zen gardens and experience a bamboo forest. It was Sunday and thus a day that many locals were also on excursions to the outskirts of the city…so the train was standing room only, but only about a 20 minute ride.

After leaving the train, it took us awhile to orient ourselves but “backwoodsman” Chris had us follow a stream which he assured me would take us down to the river. Fishermen and weekend boaters were enjoying the beautiful weather. We crossed over the river to visit the monkey refuge. This required a 20 minute walk straight up hill…but there were tons of monkeys running all around.

After the monkey excursion we headed to the Zen Temple and gardens…the gardens were beautiful and we spent an hour or so strolling through the foot paths and admiring the scenery and appreciating the serenity.

At this point we started to look for a place for lunch. We ended up in a very small restaurant serving a Japanese style pancakes which we had read about in our guidebook…we ordered one of each kind and we enjoyed them both although I have to say if I had been by myself, this is not the restaurant I would have chosen…but in retrospect it was great.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking the footpaths and small streets of this charming area of the city along with many others out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. There were a number of temples, houses with thatched roofs and a great bamboo forest. We headed back to the train late afternoon and by the time we returned to our hotel, we had walked 9.3 miles!

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