We just wrapped up four cold, wet, packed days in Kyoto! There’s a lot of history and both man-made and natural beauty to take in. I think we were both surprised by how big and crowded Kyoto was, and the 50-degree, rainy weather made it a little harder to enjoy being outside soaking in the sites.
This sums up our visit to Kyoto pretty well.
We stayed at an AirBnb about a 10-minute walk to Kyoto station. Being near the station was convenient because all trains and busses start and eventually end up there, however, almost all the activities we wanted to do were at least 45 minutes away. So we got to know the Kyoto bus system really well :)
Day 1:
We departed Lake Kawaguchiko in the morning and bus > train > walked and finally arrived to Kyoto in the afternoon. We headed over to Nishiki food market, which is sort of like the Ferry Building on steroids- tons of foods, ingredients, and souvenirs to browse.
Scenes from Nishiki market
We toasted to our first day in Kyoto at a small sake brain the market and then strolled around the Gion neighborhood a bit.
Thumbs up to sake!
Gion is probably what you picture when you think of Kyoto- has very traditional wooden buildings, narrow streets, and discrete restaurants. It’s known for Geisha sightings, but we only saw people dressed up in costume taking photos (apparently a popular pastime for Japanese tourists). We had dinner at a small place that I’d describe as a Japanese pub, called Beer Komachi and as usual, called it an early night!
A restaurant in Gion
Along the riverside (canalside?) in Gion
The next day, we woke up bright and early for our bike tour. We met up with the group only to discover that we'd actually booked for the following day! So we went into the tourist information office to quickly cobble together a backup plan. We decided to hit up some of the major tourist attractions (and, predictably, so did every other tourist in Kyoto...the crowds were intense!)
I'm not sure anyone cares too much about the details, so here is a brief look at what we saw!
1. Nijo Castle: The most interesting parts are inside, where they don't let you take photos. No photos is an excellent policy for keeping people moving along. Most interesting thing I learned here: Japanese people used to believe that cheetahs were female tigers.
2. Golden Pavilion: The most famous temple in Kyoto! Beautiful, loads of people, and where it started raining and didn't stop!
LUNCH BREAK! Even though it's on Google Maps, Fuka felt like a lovely hidden gem. Run by a really cute old man and his wife.
3. Ginkaku-ji temple: Beautiful gardens - very lush and green, plus a cool sand garden thing.
4. Kiyomizu-dera temple: So wet. So crowded. Must. Keep. Sightseeing. We were getting a little grumpy at this point in the day.
We were so tired we didn't even get a good picture of this temple. This is the best we got.
BONUS: Julia in a cool store with a bunch of rabbit-themed items.
Even though it may seem like we saw a lot, it was actually still fairly early in the day by the time we were all worn out. So we headed back to Gion for an early dinner (and well-deserved bottle of wine) at Gion Manzara which was a cozy-yet elegant restaurant with lots of good small plates to share,
DAY 3
The day of our actual bike tour! Our bike tour took us for a lovely, and chilly ride along the Kamo river, and to three other interesting sights around the city:
Heian-Jingu Shrine: This is a shinto shrine, where they seem to have a lot of interest in luck and fortunes. You can pay to get a fortune, and if it's bad, you can tie it onto a post for ritual burning, or you can write a wish and leave it at the temple. They had a wall of bad luck years (which are different for men and women) and wouldn't you know it, age 33 is the worst age right now for women! Sorry to all my fellow 33-year olds.
Ritual cleansing fountain at the shrine. Don't drink out of those ladles!
Next, we made our way to the Nanzen-ji temple, which is a Zen-Buddhist temple (fun fact: the way you can tell the difference between shinto and Buddhist temples is that Buddhist temples have human statues in them). It also has a functioning and very photogenic aqueduct- random!
Nanzen-ji temple
After a lovely ride along the Philosopher's Path (so-named for the philosophy professor who supposedly walked the path daily pondering existentialism and the like), we returned to the station and warmed up with a hot bowl of ramen from Ippudo. Ippudo is an international but very delicious ramen chain- there's one in the "Porta" section of the Kyoto station which was not very crowded!
Philosopher's Path- are you sick of spring flower photos yet?
Warmed up from the ramen we were ready to head out again- and hopped on the train over to Fushimi-Inari-Taisya shrine, known for its 10,000 vermillion torii gates. At first it was miserably crowded, like we could barely walk through the gates it was so crowded, but the further along we went, the fewer people there were.
Not so photogenic....
There's one section with two sets of gates parallel to each other, and people only walk on one side, so this lady was taking some photos in the other set of gates. It looks deceptively uncrowded!
Further up, without many tourists!
After our visit, it started raining again, hooray. We escaped the weather with drinks at the super cute Bar Rocking Chair,