Day 3 was when we said goodbye to Kobe and made the move to Kyoto, the real highlight of our 10.5 day trip to Western Honshu. We had to time our check-ins and travel time carefully though to make sure that we minimized the time we’d be spending lugging our heavy baggage around.
Firstly though; we spent a good part of the morning doing a final walkabouts of the Kobe Station, looking for breakfast at the same time.
Most eateries and restaurants were closed, and we didn’t think McDonalds was going to offer the same hotcakes breakfasts that we love in Singapore LOL. There was a Doutor Gourmet Coffee Shop beside the donut shop at Kobe Station that Ling had bought from on the first day. Ling didn’t think the donuts were that great after all, so we ducked into the former for breakfast.
One thing about all these café eateries though is that the non-smoking sections are placed real close to the smoking areas. If there’s one thing I’ve do dislike about going to Japan as a tourist, it’s the number of smokers everywhere and their having to puff away even in restaurants and eating places.
Right beside the bus terminal in Kobe Station is an octagonal-shaped forum called ‘Sun Porta’. Yep, with the ‘L’. But the morning sun’s light shining through the glass ceiling made for a pretty nice picture.
Post-brunch, we checked out of the hotel at 10:00 AM and headed to Kosoku Kobe subway station and took a ‘Limited Express’ JR Hankyu line to Juso station in Osaka, then onto Karasuma Station in Kyoto itself.
We blooped a little here in our travel arrangements though. It wasn’t necessary for us to alight off Juso station – which we did based on our ticket fare. Rather, we could have taken paid a single fare from Kosoku Kobe to Karasuma Station. Oh well – lesson learned having paid about double.
The combined train rides between Kosoku Kobe and Karasuma Stations was just over an hour. But including the time we took to transfer, get our bearings, paid for tickets the second time (sigh), by the time we got to our mainstay for our trip – Mitsui Garden Hotel Kyoto – it was about 12:15 PM already.
Normal check-in time at the hotel was 2:00 PM, and the concierge was only willing to let us in by earlier by an hour, so it was more exploration on foot. Kyoto has a very different feel about it compared to Kobe or Kumamoto that I was in last year… it feels a lot more upscale (?!).
While prowling the area to see where we could get lunch, we got into a shopping mall called “Laque” that made us feel very poor. It was all boutique and very expensive looking. Thee was a lovely florist at the basement level with very well-arranged bouquets though… all going for at least a hundred dollars and above.
So, it was back to the street level for us on the look-out for lunches on a budget! More in the next post.:)
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