Day 32: Into the Great Wide Open!

Today was one of my favourite days of the trip so far.

Derek planned a great hike at Daimonji about 500m up part of the mountain. The bonus about hiking up is that you leave the crowds behind.

There were 2 tops to this mountain – the first held fantastic views of Kyoto and the surrounding areas.

The 2nd top (which was about 20 minutes further along the trail) for us just held views of a cloud, but it was great to get to the real top.

Next we hiked back down the mountain, and went for some lunch, which was delicious!

Then things got interesting! We went up Mount Hiei. The mountain is about 850m up but given that we had already done a hike, we figured we’d take the funicular!

Then we went through a garden called the Mount Hiei Garden Museum the idea of which was “impressionist paintings recreated in real life” and they had really done a spectacular job of that. They had huge paintings on display, and then next to them, they would have re-created some of the paintings. Claude Monet was featured heavily.

We had a little cake at Cafe Paris, and then hiked over to a different set of cable cars.

For this hike we had no map except the Google Maps satellite view which showed a trail. Part of it felt like we were in Jurassic Park. There was no one else on the trail. It was spectacular. Part way through we stumbled upon a long row of stone memorials of some type. And best of all, someone was ringing the gong at a nearby temple while we were walking through the forest. Amazing.

(Cole was having fun – the 3 kids were busy for most of this downhill hike imaginary shooting imaginary something-or-others with their umbrellas! BUT he is tired of having his picture taken so is insisting on making a sad face from now on!… but the forest was so beautiful!)

Lastly, we came down a cable car which took about 11 minutes. It went through some long tunnels and had a huge drop off to one side, and then we were on our way home.

All in all, a great day. Though the kids and I are now officially tired!

Hard to believe it but tomorrow is our last day in Kyoto 🙁