Kyoto, Day 2

We tried to do something more fun for John today. The results were mixed. First up was a visit to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in the Arashiyama District of Kyoto. We enjoyed a nice walk on a beautiful day to the park from the train station and then had a bit of a climb to get up the mountain to where the monkeys actually live at (some 150m above sea level - quite a lot higher than Kyoto proper). After "monkeying" around there for a while, we moved on to something more interesting to us "grown-ups" - a thirde UNESCO World Heritage Site, called Tenryu-ji. This Zen temple and the adjoining garden was very beautiful and I took many, many photos during our visit (please visit Flikr to see them all). John was bored before we even started looking around, so we hurried through a bit to get to another site that he was a little more interested, the adjoining bamboo forest. It was fun to go for a walk in this forest, which was unlike any I have ever been in before (and I think it is a place that pandas would love to visit!). After these three visits, we enjoyed a nice walk back to the Arashiyama train station, taking in some nice views of Kyoto as we went. I then took some shots of Kyoto from the train on the way back to the hotel and a few more shots of the sunset over Kyoto after we got back to the hotel.

I have to admit, I think Kyoto is the best place we have seen in Japan yet! We are looking forward to the rest of our visit here and seeing some more beautiful Kyoto sites!

GJS