15 Sep 2008 - Day 4: Nara and Kyoto

Itinerary for today is Nara in the morning and Kyoto in the afternoon. We knew that it will be quite rush to cover most of the places but it's ok because our intention is not to cover everything. As long as Jerlene enjoys the places that we go, we are contented.
We bought a 3 days Kansai Thru Pass (5,000yen) that allows us to travel on most of the train/metro (except JR) and buses. From the station below our hotel, we took the Kintetsu Nara Line that brought us directly to Nara. The journey is about 40mins (express).
There are quite a number of Famous Shrines/Temples in Nara and some of them are classified as World Heritage. The first one that we went to is Kofuku-Ji.
Many people had told me that Jerlene will definitely like Nara because there are deers roaming freely everywhere. And indeed, Jerlene enjoyed very much chasing and touching the deers.

The next Shrine that we went is Todai-ji.

Outside of Todai-ji, there is a big pond and a big piece of open grassland where Jerlene enjoyed running about. The scenery is great here in Nara Park.
By the time we left Nara, it was already 2pm. Our next destination is Kyoto. Again, we took the Kintetsu Kyoto Line that goes direct to Kyoto. The moment we stepped out of the train station, we can see the famous Kyoto Tower.

By the way, the weather then was very cloudy. In fact, it was drizzling but that did not stop us from visiting places of interest. Kyoto is a historical city with many temples and shrines. As we do not have much time here, we can only choose to go one or two places. Looking at the map, we decided to head to Kyoto Imperial Palace.

There is a shrine at the outskirt of the palace ground. We took a few photos there as the scenery is quite nice. Too bad, Jerlene was sleeping then.
It was quite a long walk to the palace. And worse thing is, the pebble road made it very difficult for me to push the stroller, especially when Jerlene was still sleeping on it. So I decided to walk on the grass instead.

Jerlene finally woke up when we reached the entrance to the palace. After Jerlene had her milk, she immediately became very active and cheerful, which is good for me to take some good shots.
We left the Imperial Palace at about 5pm and from the guide book, it seemed like most shrines have already closed. Anyway, the sky was getting dark so we decided to head back to the Kyoto station. On our way, we went into a shrine that has yet to close.

We decided to find a place for dinner around Kyoto Station. We ate at a Chinese restaurant but no one understand Chinese. After dinner, it was already dark and it's time to go back to our hotel and call it a day.