Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Kyoto

On A Bike

Reading up on Kyoto, a couple of travel sources recommended renting bikes to get around Kyoto. So at the train station, Darin picked up a flyer for a bike rental shop where we can rent a single speed bike for 800 yen and a 3-speed bike for 950. Darin opted for a one speed and being sick and not wanting to expend a lot of energy, I went with the 3-speed. In hindsight, we both would have been able to get around town in a single speed since Kyoto is fairly flat and I only needed to use the higher gear twice.

Renting a bike was a pretty great idea since we were able to see quite a bit of the city at our own pace. We got to come and go throughout town and not have to wait around for public transportation.

So what is there to see in Kyoto? Gardens and temples. And this being cherry blossom season, we got to see quite a bit of cherry blossoms in gardens and temples.

Willowy Cherry Blossom


Darin in His Cherry Blossom Pose

Cherry Blossoms by Buddha

Cherry Blossoms by a Cemetery

Cherry Blossoms by a Creek

Pink Ones and Pinker Ones

Artist Painting Cherry Blossoms and Selling Post Cards

Cherry Blossoms by a Canal

Cherry Blossoms by Tulips

Flower Arrangements

After spending the first day riding around Kyoto and doing quite a bit, we thought we'd take it easy on the second day and go out of the city center and visit one of the neighboring suburbs. Darin read somewhere that there was a flower arranging exhibition at a nearby temple. Though you'd think after a week of looking at cherry blossoms, we'd be sick and tired of seeing flowers, but we thought that this might be a little different from the ordinary sight.

It was pretty cool, but my tolerance for looking at arranged flowers is a little lower than Darin's.








No comments:

Post a Comment