Temples, Shrines and Castle

We've packed in a lot today. The city bus service is so easy to navigate and gets you to places really quickly and efficiently. We've visited the Kinkaku-ji golden temple which was really quite beautiful, the Kiyomizu-dera
Buddhist temple,which was huge and and also had all sorts of shrines, pagodas etc in the area, and then the Ni-nijo castle, former home of various shoguns back in the day and then when the shogun reign ended it was handed over the the Emperor to become an imperial palace. I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but do grateful that Chris suggested we watched Shogun , going around the castle , and all that they were explaining really resonated having watched the show. No photos were allowed inside the castle building anf we witnessed one of the workers chasing down a tourist who'd taken some pics, making her delete them and then , ( we think) radioing to her other colleagues to look out for her! 🤣 If those are the rules don't break them!

This evening we visited the market and engaged in chocolate strawberry eating, sake taste ing, chopsticks buying and then tea in a restaurant where there was very little English understood, and we tried to work out if the ' vegetarian ' meals contained meat! We ordered three meals but only two arrived, but maybe just as well as Chris's meal was huge so he and Carys shared.

And the Geisha girls were posing for pics outside a shop near one of the temples, so unlikely to be the genuine article, we think.