Friday April 10
After a relaxing breakfast we walked to Tokyo Station (less than 15 minutes) to catch our Nozomi (fastest of the fast bullet trains) to Kyoto. The train of course left sharp on time - our tourist class cabin was quite full but very comfortable particularly since we had pre-shipped our luggage. The highlight of the 2.5 hour trip was a nice, but cloudy, view of Mt Fuji along the way.
By the time we arrived at Kyoto station it was raining hard - so we joined a very long taxi queue. In the end it only took about 15 minutes to get to the top of the queue and thankfully our taxi driver understood our request to take us to the Hyatt. The Hyatt’s web site claims they are only 1km from the station but the drive seemed more like 3km.
We checked in and while waiting for our room to become available we had a salad and shared Margareta pizza in the hotel’s Italian restaurant - pretty good. We completed the check-in procedure and thankfully our pre-shipped luggage had arrived, as promised. After a bit of unpacked and resting we went to the National Museum right next door. After that (and considering the continuing heavy showers) it was too late to visit any other attractions.
Back at the hotel we had a short break before hitting the hotel’s bar for happy hour. We had dinner at the Touzan, the hotel’s Japanese restaurant - it turned out to be a bit of a disaster with poor timing; also Dieter’s 2 courses were totally not what he expected. He made such a fuss they took his meal off the bill. The highlight was the French Champagne we had to celebrate our 40ieth anniversary albiet 2 days early. We met a French couple at an adjacent table and had a night cap with them afterwards - they were very interesting.
Saturday April 11
It was our only full day in Kyoto and the weather cooperated - a fine day - clear and mild (around 17℃). We set out early to visit as many attractions as possible starting with the most famous and farthest away in the Kinkakuji/Uzumasa area - 10 minutes by taxi to the train station, 15 minutes by train then another 15 minutes by taxi. First stop was the Golden Pavilion - very beautiful - fortunately we were early as we had been warned that all places can get very crowded particularly on fine weekends. From here we walked some k’s to 2 other temples including the Ryoanji Temple again - each one getting progressively more crowded. We took a taxi/train combo back to the central railway and when we found the taxi queue to be very long we walked back to our hotel - about 20 minutes (probably about the same length as the taxi queue).
We planned to have a quick lunch at the hotel’s Italian restaurant (again) but it was totally full - Dieter managed to get the manager to squeeze us in - even so it took a while to get served - 2 set lunches of salad, panini and small ice cream - a good deal at ¥1200.
In the afternoon we visited another temple (Fushini Inari Taisha) and gardens - arriving by taxi then taking a local train back since we could not find a taxi.
We ate dinner at the hotel’s grill restaurant which was excellent.
Sunday April 12
Our 40ieth anniversary - amazing - you don’t get that long for murder. We had a full morning as we still wanted to visit a few more attractions before catching the 12:36pm Nozomi back to Tokyo. We took a taxi to Heian Jingu Shrine then walked to Shoren-in Temple, Chion-in temple and Mayuyama Park then onto Kiyomizudera Temple which turned out to be a real highlight - the small streets leading up to the entrance are lined with the most interesting shops and restaurants - you could easily spend the whole day here but we needed to ‘get on our bike’.
We took a taxi back to the hotel and found we could have easily walked. We checked out and took another taxi to the main train station and caught our Nozmi back to Tokyo - where we changed to the NEX airport express. From the airport we took the Hilton’s shuttle bus to our hotel for the night arriving (finally) around 5:00pm - fortunately our 2 mega-suitcases made it - we had shipped them ahead (one from the Place Hotel and the other from the Hyatt) to make travelling by train easier.
We had drinks in the bar then a buffet dinner which was included in our ‘dinner, bed and breakfast’ rate at the Hilton - it was pretty average. The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel before heading to the airport for our 10:0am flight to Guam. By way of note - the breakfast at the Hilton definitely rates a mention as one of the “top 10 worst hotel breakfasts in the world” - we vowed to never return to this Hilton and to this end canceled our next stay booked on our evening arrival back from Guam.