More Kyoto

We also spent a morning at the Kyoto Imperial Palace — the home of the Imperial Family until the Japanese capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1868. The grounds are open for wandering and many families were enjoying Sunday morning picnics. But on our way to the Palace after getting off the subway, we happened upon this delightful little alley. We had to take a detour through here first, and then on to the Palace. We were too early for shops to be open.

The grounds of the Palace included a beautiful garden.

Oddly, on a Sunday morning there was a large group of school kids, in uniform also touring the grounds. We had one take a picture of us and then in turn got a photo of them too.

They got a kick out of speaking English to foreigners. Every now and then throughout our trip we’d hear a very precise “Have a nice day” with a big grin.

This day also included taking the subway to the east end of town to shop (I got a lovely woodcut print of the Inari Shrine torii gates), walking towards the Philosopher’s Path, lunch at a Family Mart, giving up and taking a cab to the Philospher’s Path, walking the length of the Philospher’s Path (beautiful, but busy on a hot Sunday afternoon), losing Deborah for a hour, deciding to walk as far as the Westin Hotel we could see on Google Maps, collapsing there for a few minutes, taking another cab to start our pre-booked tour of the Gion area (what I like to refer to as the Geisha-no-Geisha tour; not a Geisha to be seen), suffering through the tour (I’m sure it was great, but we all just wanted to be back at our hotel by then), and taking a final cab home at 7:30p. An 8-mile day that took us a few days to recover from. We knew if we were still talking the next day, we’d be ok together for the rest of our time in Japan.