Fall Trip Part 1: Fall Colors at Daitokuji
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Last weekend was a three day weekend so we went to Kyoto to see the fall colors. We left early in the morning and arrived in Kyoto a little bit after 11. First we had to wait in a line for about 30-45 minutes to leave our stuff in the luggage room because of the crazy amount of people visiting Kyoto that weekend. I had known that all the coin lockers would be full so I had looked up alternatives beforehand, but I hadn't expected such a long line! Not fun.
After getting rid of our stuff, we got lunch from a bakery. I had a chicken sandwich and a delicious walnut and banana chip pastry. Soooo tasty!
After eating we took a subway and then walked to Daitokuji. As we walked we got pretty warm. I had a jacket with me, but I didn't need it. The weather was beautiful!
Daitokuji is a temple complex with a bunch of little temples. It was such a fun area to explore. You have to pay admission for each one separately so we only visited three, but just walking around the area between some of the others was really nice.
A really nice old Japanese lady offered to take a picture of Jonathan and me together. It's a bit more zoomed in than I would like (because I handed the camera to her when it was zoomed in), but I really like it because Jonathan don't have many pictures of us together here.
Such pretty fall colors! :)
The first temple we visited was Daisenin, but they don't let you take pictures there so I don't have anything to show, but it was nice.
Next we went to Kotoin, which was the one I was looking forward to the most because I had read that it had many maple trees. It didn't disappoint!
The path at the entrance goes through bamboo. The maple trees contrasting against the green bamboo was so pretty!
Kotoin was amazing! Also, it was busy but not crowded, so that was great!
We had to take our shoes off at the entrance to walk through the building, so then we had to wear slippers to go through the garden. That's why Jonathan is wearing green shoes, haha.
Next we went to Ryogenin. There were even fewer people than Kotoin so it was very peaceful. It was very nice, but it didn't have any fall colors and was probably my least favorite of the three. But it was still worth the 350 yen admission price.
I guess many people have hit their head on that low roof, haha.
I had never been to Daitokuji, so it was nice to go somewhere new. Jonathan had been there before and if he hadn't told me about it I don't know if I would have known about it. I really recommend it, especially Kotoin in the fall. Even though we were there on one of the busiest weekends of the year, it wasn't crowded.