Day 61 – Kyoto
Today we walked from Santiago Hostel to Fushimi Inari Taisha. Fushimi Inari is a site full of thousands of Torii Gates that have been donated over the years. The site has been around since before 794 AD.
We spent around two hours there climbing the trails around Mount Inari. While here, we had a chance encounter with a friend we had made in Nikko! This made the gates even better as we could enjoy it with him also, and J and I had someone to take photos of us now! After 2 hours at Fushimi Inari Taisha we said goodbye to our friend at the Inari train station. Just a note, we got here in the morning, and it was relatively quite. By the time we got down, there were hundreds of tourists.
We had to take two trains to our next destination. At the stop over station, Kawaramachi Station, we encountered the first ticket machines that weren’t in English. We had to ask around before we worked out how to buy a ticket.
From Arashiyama Station there is a short walk towards the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. The grove is a short path through, as the name suggests a grove full of bamboos on either side. It was full once again of tourists but we were still able to enjoy our time.
From here we went to Rokuonji Temple aka Golden Pavilion Temple. Unlike the Silver Pavilion, the building is actually covered in Gold. The building itself was very cool (I like shiny things) but the gardens of the Silver Pavilion were still cooler for me personally.
We then caught a bus to Nijo-ji Castle, which was built in 1603. As we approached the ticket counter they closed the line, but they allowed us to still go in. Once at the Castle, we were told to go direct to the main building as it would be closing very soon. The highlight of the building was the flooring, due to the construction, every time someone makes a step, it sounds like a bird tweeting.
The grounds of the Castle were also large and very cool. We had a loud speaker making an announcement for the last 30 minutes telling us to leave. We didn’t notice anyone else really taking any notice, so we walked around the grounds also.
After that we walked back to our accommodation and freshened up, before meeting up with our mate from Fushimi Inari Taisha. He told us of an amazing Japanese food, which we agreed to go to, but unfortunately he could not find the place (he told us it was closed but I reckon he made it up =P ). We ended up have maccas for dinner again.