A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 46 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Wow...those cab drivers would have been on my last nerve as well. I probably would have wanted to push the driver over and take over - even with teh signs in Japanese you probably would have gotten their faster.
I am sorry that you and Mark aren't loving Kyoto as you did Tokyo (or at least not yet). I definitely agree location is a big thing, if your hotel is on the outskirts and you are spending so much time traveling (and also not having the best travel options available) it would kind of take away some of the love I was feeling as well.
Hope you make your walk and I am have a feeling there is a whole another side of Kyoto that you have yet to see....
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Yet more beautiful pictures from another beautiful shrine and garden. I wish it hadn't been raining so you could have enjoyed it more. Well, it sounds like the next few updates ought to be pretty interesting!
Saturday 4 April – part six: will we make the geisha walk?
We turned along Shijo-dori, which it turns out is the main shopping street in Kyoto and then we just crawled along the thing and I mean we crawled. By the time we got to the theatre, it was 4.40 and no-one was there. I had tried to text the guy who runs it, as I had his cell phone number, but I guess he had other people and had to go, which is fair enough. It’s all our fault we were late after all and at least we hadn’t paid for it, so we didn’t lose any money.
We made the best of the situation and set off back along the main shopping street, getting some photos of the Kamo River.
The theatre we were meant to meet at for the tour
As we passed that, we found a convenience store, so went in and picked up a few bits and pieces that looked fun, including some crisps, although goodness knows what flavour they were. We could work out mine was prawn, but Mark’s was a real guess. We also found some well known British names in here, such as KitKat and Aero chocolates and Frosties cereals. It’s quite funny to see those written in Japanese.
From there, we walked along a bit further:
We decided to go down one of the shopping alleys that we had seen as we drove down. My goodness, what a discovery. Those just go on for miles and they have been there for the last 100 years or so. This was full of much more of what we were hoping to find in Tokyo, including reasonably priced souvenir shops. Now this is more like it.
We browsed and bought a few souvenirs and then headed back outside. By now, we were getting hungry and were convinced that there was a McDonalds further down the road, so we set off that way. I know it’s a cop out, but it’s quick and you know what you’re getting. Still we were mistaken and there was no McDonalds, so the only option was to go back to the hotel or go back and get something to eat. We opted for the latter.
It was still raining, but fortunately all of Kyoto’s main shopping street is undercover, because the shops have coverings over the pavement. We walked back and it was much further back than we remembered. By now, my bad ankle that I damaged a couple of years ago was really hurting, so I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. : It’s fair to say that I was pretty happy to finally see those familiar golden arches.
We went in and ordered our food, another ebi burger for me and double cheeseburger for Mark and then it was off to find somewhere to eat it. Here, fast food places are often on more than one floor and finally I found seats on the top floor (typical!), which was the star floor. It was nice in there and we ended up being the only people in there.
Suitably refreshed, we walked back down to the hotel, looking at all the shops on the way.
Although we hadn’t been that impressed by Kyoto earlier. We had certainly changed our minds now and we were both enjoying our time here much more now. We spent the evening in the room, as we had free Internet access. I was on that, while Mark found a Japanese football match to watch, so he was happy. It was an early night, as it had been a very long day, during which we had done a lot.
Today we walked 5.36 miles The weather today was dry in the morning, then heavy rain later and cloudy with temperatures in the 40s. The best thing today was Nijo Castle. The worst thing today was missing the geisha tour and the weather. Today we tried some rice balls and fish snacks And the result was they were pretty good. The most magical moment today was seeing Kinkaku-ji for the first time.
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- even with teh signs in Japanese you probably would have gotten their faster.
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
PassPorter Guide Author
: It’s fair to say that I was pretty happy to finally see those familiar golden arches. 
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