Walking… walking… and more walking...

Ohhhh…. My back! I woke up Wednesday morning with a stiff neck and a sore back. It’s so much harder to get out of bed when you’re lying on the floor than it is when you get out of a bed that’s three feet off the floor… go figure. After a few solid minutes of struggling to get up, I managed to get to my feet only to be instructed to sit on my knees for breakfast. Our room maiden (I guess that’s what you’d call her) this sweet Japanese mother-type brought in our breakfast and set it up for us on our extremely low tables.

Our breakfast was a traditional Japanese-style meal which included a few more things that I didn’t really know I was eating. I did recognize the white rice and dried salmon, and a little tofu and miso soup, but the rest was an enigma. Oh, they were nice enough to give us another raw egg… what’s the deal with raw freakin’ eggs?? They put them on EVERYTHING!

I somehow managed to eat just about everything that was served to me, while Patty hardly touched hers. After breakfast, we got ourselves ready and headed out for our walk to some ancient temples in the area of southern Higashiyama.

A couple of blocks past our ryokan was a small temple which we almost didn't even notice. We entered the area to explore and found a hidden treasure.

It was neat to see this temple reflecting off of the modern buildings surrounding it.


There was a curved row of Buddha statues that made for some great photos…

A schoolgirl reading...

We continued our walk towards Kyoto Station where it was our intent to catch a bus to the beginning of our planned walk. About 25 minutes into our walk, I decided to look at the map and realized we were only halfway there. I then made the brilliant decision to cut out the subway and bus ride in order to walk more towards our destination. Well, it wasn’t the smartest decision I ever made, and my legs will remind me of that for days to come.

We arrived at the beginning point of our walk, had a drink and a piece of cake, and started our tour…