Tuesday March 22nd, 2016 Osaka (Kyoto), Japan

This morning the ship docked in Osaka and this is where we will be disembarking. There was quite a crowd waiting on the dock; hundreds of people plus TV cameras – we later found out that this was the maiden visit for the Queen Elizabeth to Osaka and that this had made the morning news in the local area. 

Disembarkation was very smooth mainly due to the small number of passengers who were finishing their cruise in Osaka. The ship is actually on a world cruise and we were only on board for one segment of the overall itinerary; Cunard sells segments of the world cruise to those who don’t want to stay on board for the whole 121 days it takes to do the full world cruise. 

Our driver was waiting for us but it took a few minutes to realize this as the sign he held displayed our son’s name not ours – he had booked the driver and hotel for us and so they assumed he would be the one to pick up. After the driver had solved the 3D jigsaw puzzle called “how to fit three very large suitcases in an average sized car” we set off for the 1½-hour drive to Kyoto.

For our post-cruise stay in Japan we are spending two nights in Kyoto and then three nights in Tokyo. Based on the research prior to the trip we had concluded that, even though it was a bit of a drive from the port, Kyoto had more to offer that Osaka. 

We arrived at the Westin Miyako hotel in Kyoto by late morning and of course our room was not ready for us. So we stashed our luggage with the bell people and headed for the coffee shop off the lobby to make plans for the afternoon. The Westin Miyako is obviously a hotel that used to be very popular with visiting dignitaries – I concluded this from the series of impressive black and white photographs that adorned the walls of the coffee shop; a veritable who’s-who from the world of politics, royalty and movies but the last three decades were not represented at all.

The lobby coffee shop is highly recommended, though not inexpensive – a fantastic array of cakes was brought to the table for the purposes of inducing copious drooling followed by the impossible task of selected just one. We sat and enjoyed the great coffees and delicious cakes while looking over the maps and information that had been given to us by the very helpful concierge.

The concierge had recommended a short walk to one of the many temples in the area but despite my outstanding navigational skills we still managed to get quite lost – I blamed the map. However due to the high density of temples in Kyoto we did not have to go far before we found one; actually it was huge and therefore pretty hard to miss.

The Heian-Jingu Shrine was impressive but the surrounding gardens were awesome. We paid the small entry fee and wandered through the beautifully maintained gardens with ponds, streams and bridges – highly recommended. If we had been visiting about a week later I’m sure we would have witnessed a superb display of cheery blossoms from the many expertly pruned trees in the gardens – oh well you can’t win them all!

We tried but failed to find a restaurant for lunch; the places the concierge had recommended were all extremely small and therefore full up – in a way I was glad because they were very traditional Japanese, meaning floor level seating and very low tables. So we returned to the hotel and ate in one of the restaurants, it was OK.

We were finally able to check in to our room, which turned out to be small suite – nice though a little in need of a make over. In addition to a very large bedroom with king sized bed, the suite also included a separate sitting room, walk-in luggage room come closet and a nicely appointed bathroom complete with the Japanese style automatic toilet / bidet – a real treat. 

Later that evening we checked out the club level and were once again were very disappointed at the selection of foods available – confirming our suspicions Asian hotel club levels have now descended to the pitiful levels of those found in the US. And so we took the hotel shuttle bus into the center of Kyoto and had a little walk around the station area. With many shops and restaurants, the Kyoto station area is a bustling hive of activity – this is not just a place to go to catch the train. Within the station complex we found settled on a small restaurant, mainly because it had tempura on the menu – a favorite of ours. Following a quite puzzling lengthy wait we were finally shown to a small booth that had sat vacant the entire time we were stood waiting, about 20 minutes. I chalked this up to the mysteries of the Japanese culture. The menu was entirely in Japanese, but luckily included nice pictures of all the items – so following a series of pointing and grunting cycles we were finally able to place our order. We shared tempura, noodles and other a few other mysterious items – I always find that beer is a good lubricant for these culinary adventures.