Day 7: Trip to Kyoto

For our 7th day in Japan, we had a trip to Kyoto today. To get there from our hotel, we took the subway to Osaka Station. From there we used our JR Railpass and went to platform 8 to take the JR Kyoto Rapid line...

The train just came in when we just arrived at the platform. So we moved quickly from Osaka to Kyoto Station. We were pretty lucky with the weather we had today, because the forcast told us it would rain. But instead of that it was pretty sunny and warm...

Our trip with the train kinda took around 20 minutes to Kyoto Station. We then exit the JR section of Kyoto Station to take some pictures of the Trainstation itself. 

After that it was off to the subway station to the Gion district of Kyoto. We had to transfer 2 times to get to Gion. But because of the holiday period and the good weather it was really crowded in Kyoto. So crowded that we had to pass up the first train we could get, and had to board the second one...  

After a few minutes by Subway we exited towards street level 

and started to walk to Gion. 

We saw nice and pretty spots while walking to Gion.

The Sakura Trees are still beautifull and nice between the buildings...

Then we had to cross a river to get to Gion District. On the river bed people are enjoying the weather and are having picnics. It really looks so cozy... 

We then came across a very beautifull street along a small riverbank with a lot of Sakura trees. It was pretty crowded but still nice and lively...

 After a long walk we finally arrived at Gion.  Gion is Kyoto's most famous geisha district, located around Shijo Avenue between Yasaka Shrine in the east and the Kamo River in the west. It is filled with shops, restaurants and ochaya (teahouses).

After walking trough the Gion district we went for a spiritual walk in the temple areas just behind the Gion district. During our walk we found a lane with lots of of small souvenir shops... They really had lotsa an nice stuff that they sell there...

Lilia came across a buddha. You can get your 

blessing from him by touching him... 

We then ended up in Maruyama Park which lies between temple areas. It was really crowded here and they also had a lot of vendors selling stuff like foods, drinks and souvenirs...

While having a small break with eating snacks and 

having some refreshing drinks, we enjoyed the environment...

Then it's off to visit and climb the stairs in the 

Chion-in Temple area...

Chionin is the head temple of the Jodo sect of Japanese Buddhism, which has millions of followers and is one the the most popular Buddhist sects in Japan. The temple has spacious grounds and large buildings. Visitors will surely notice the temple when they come across its massive Sanmon Gate. Unfortunely the temple was under a big renovation project so we didn't got to see it...

This place has a lot of stairs to walk on if you want to get to the top of the area. It was a good workout to walk around here... 

After walking around a lot in the Chion-in temple area, it was time for us to go back down stairs and head for Kyoto Station with the subway...

When we got back to Osaka near our hotel, we went for dinner at this place called Sukiya. Sukiya is a Japanese restaurant chain serving gyudon dishes, other donburi and curry dishes. Kurisu ate a few times at Sukiya and wanted to taste their food again... 

We ended up ordering gyudon dishes

for our dinner meal... Nom nom away!!! XD

With finishing our good and delicious dinner at Sukiya, we ended our 7th day in Japan. It's off to bed and getting ready for our next day... Everybody, Goodnight and blog you soon... ^^