Epic day in Kyoto

Well once again, not enough time to write. I can't even summarize yesterday without it taking two hours to write. The super highlights:

First full day in Kyoto. We did a walking tour of the old part of Kyoto. We saw several nice temples and gardens. The funny thing is we barely touched the tip of the iceberg. There are just that many temples and shrines here. One of the more interesting moments is when we went out the back gate of one of the hillside temples... it didn't say we couldn't go out it. Well a little stroll in the forest became a rather interesting hike. Eventually we popped out at the top of a ridge overlooking Kyoto. It was quite a view, and we were very alone on top. We found out that it was another burial site for a Shogun. The trip down was even more exciting because we discovered we had actually taken a goat path up, but there was a nice trail down.. but where it lwould ead to we were not exactly sure. It went in kinda the right direction, and it did. It just got a little dicey because as we started going down the path it went from nice rock to muddy grass. We were afraid the trail would just end and we'd have to turn back up the (steep) hill. But no, we emerged out into a HUGE cemetery. Minutes later we were back on the map, literally. More temples, gardens, amazing mochi desserts and a grilled Unagi dinner summed up the rest of the day. We got back to the hotel after dark and then headed out across the street to Nijo castle for a nighttime walk under the lights. Amazing day. You could spend a year in this town.

More hoofing expected today. Anya is zonked out right now, she had to do some work last night. But shortly we'll get dressed and see if we can get lost, again, in Kyoto.

Japan - Day 7