Kyoto Part II

After we left the restaurant, we wandered around town and ended up at the Kyoto Imperial Palace, which wasn't all that imperial. And it was closed so we could only walk around the garden. We did stumble onto the cool little bridge that we had seen from Tokyo Tower. I don't have any pictures of it up close, because that was about the time that my batteries died. So we hung out in the little park, we were all really tired from all of the walking we had done that day, but there was still more walking to do.

We had decided to go on a Philosopher's Walk that we had read about. Over near Kyoto University there is a lovely little pathway along this little canal. And apparently one of the philosophy teachers always made his students take this walk and contemplate things, so it was called the Philosopher's Walk. It was very lovely, there was no traffic and the cherry blossoms had been dropping their flowers and it looked really pretty. We stumbled onto a lovely little shop selling ice cream. So most of us gave into temptation and bought some. There were flavors like cherry blossom and green tea. Chocolate and vanilla isn't enough for this country. At the end of the walk, we found a little playground. So we stopped played for a few minutes.

Then we decided it was probably time to head back home. We stopped a Westerner to ask him for directions. It turns out that he was an artist from Paris living in Kyoto. And he spoke excellent English. He told us which direction to go to catch the bus. We found the bus and headed for our hostel.

By this time we were all pretty hungry. So we stopped at a place called Don-Bori for some Okinomiyaki. It was delicious. And it felt really good to just sit down. After dinner we headed for the hostel to get some sleep.