Buses, trains and walking

Today we took a bus and then a train to an area of Kyoto called Arashiyama.  We walked through the bamboo grove, visited a temple and then climbed up to a Macaque Monkey Park.

The bamboo groves  in Arashiyama are really interesting.  And if you want to pay the price, these guys will run you up the various paths.

This is a walking path near one of the temples.

The gardens surrounding the temple

After visiting the bamboo grove and the main temple, we were ready for lunch!  We found this nice little restaurant along the river.

Boats ferrying passengers to some places along the river.

After lunch, and after debating back and forth about whether we should do the steep hike up to the nearby Macaque Monkey Park, we  decided to cross the river on the Togetsukyo Bridge and curiosity won out.  So, we climbed a quite steep trail to the Macaque Monkey Park.  This is a view of Kyoto from the top where the monkey park is.

There were lots of Macaques!  The fun ones to watch were the babies but also interesting was a little section of the park where the monkeys seemed to consider it their grooming area.  There were plenty of monkeys in that section grooming one another.

Then we walked back down and across the bridge again.  We got some ice cream cones and then just casually strolled along the river before moving on to the next place we wanted to visit.

We had to go back to the train station so we walked along some very touristy street on our way.  We enjoyed the shops - one shop had little figurines made out of silk worm cocoons.  They were nice but probably would not have survived a trip back home.  Then we found a place to have a little dessert which we devoured as we stood outside.  I don't remember the name of the dessert, but it was delicious!

The train we caught to get us back to Kyoto was really full so we had to stand.  Then we caught a bus to take us out to the section of Kyoto called Guion.  We got off the bus at this temple.

Picking a fortune telling paper slip

The fortune paper slips tied on to accessible parts of trees.

We walked to the entrance gate to the main temple in this area but the gate was already closed.   We then decided to walk down the street to another temple nearby that had huge 800 year old Camphor Trees.  

The gate was already closed at this place, too, so we decided to walk back to the area where we got off the bus and start looking for a place to have dinner.  After walking around quite a bit, we finally found a nice little place that wasn't TOO expensive.  So this is where we had dinner that night.  We really enjoyed our meal here.  

After dinner, we caught a bus back to our apartment and it sure felt good to relax after such a nice day.