Day 6 and 7 (last day): Golden Pavilion, Higashiyama, Nishiki Market, Nijo Castle

Day 6 it was raining, but we found ourselves, along with every other tourist at the Golden Pavilion first thing in the morning. The Golden Pavilion, which is the Kinkaku-ji temple, is a very beautiful temple covered in gold leaf, that sits next to a pond on a hillside. The visit involves a short walk through a nice garden. Unlike some of the other temples we visited, this one can be seen in a fairly short amount of time, but is still worth the visit.

 


After Kinkaku-ji, we took a cab across town to do the Lonely Planet Southern Higashiyama walking tour. It's about a four hour tour that takes you through a few temples and a really beautiful part of Kyoto. It was recommended by Akash and Nicole and we really enjoyed it.

We started at the Kiyomizu-dera temple, which is a pretty temple nestled at the top of a hill with a view of the city, and a large, three story pagoda. To get to the temple you walk up an incredibly crowded, touristy street full of shopping selling mochi and souvenirs. We could't help but try some soft serve ice cream in this danish pastry. Soft serve is so good in Japan!





After that we wound our way through narrow Sannen-zaka, and Ninnen-zaka which are little streets filled with old wooden houses, shops, and restaurants. The walking tour also has you go down Ishibei-koji, a very well kept traditional street with homes and restaurants. It's very quiet will almost no foot traffic or tourists.

Ishibei-koji

From there we headed to Maruyama-koen  park which has a beautiful garden with a hilly backdrop. Also in the park is the medium-sized (and free) Yasaka-jinga shrine. Nothing special here, but cool to see.

The most famous tree in Kyoto - The Gion Shidare Sakura

Lanterns at Yasaka-jinga

My favorite part of the walk was Chion-in, which has a magnificent gate entrance. There are several steps leading into the temple, and several nooks and crannies of the grounds to explore. There are even more steps to take you up higher into the hills. It's a really spectacular place.

The gate at Chion-in

 
 

We ended the walk at Shoren-in, a temple built in the late 13th century which is more of a house. In includes a beautiful garden (where in Japan doesn't have a beautiful garden?), including 800 year old camphor trees. The tree outside of Shoren-in is particularly beautiful, and is reminiscent of the giant oak trees in California. 

After 4 hours of walking in the rain, we were super hungry, so we decided to eat our way through Nishiki market. It's a huge covered food market, with tons of tasty snacks to try. We had rice crackers,  a beef bun, sesame balls, incredible tuna sashimi, and an accidental fish cake. Fish cakes are hard to avoid as they trick you into thinking it is some sort of delicious potato bacon fried treat, but it's really a fish cake. When in doubt, assume something is a fish cake.

  


We ended the night with another walk around Gion and through town to our hotel.

Day 7 (last day):
For our last day, we only had a couple hours to spare before we had to catch a train to Osaka for our fight. We settled on Nijo castle, an easy 20 minute walk from our hotel. It's an impressive complex, including moats. You can see the room where Emperor Meiji issued the edict abolishing the Shogunate in the late 1800s. The rooms of the castle contain very ornate artwork, but no photos are allowed. The grounds are very pretty, and include several cherry blossom trees.

Our train ride to Osaka was about 90 minutes, but it was a very pretty ride through the countryside. Osaka airport was amazing, tons of good shopping! Overall it was an amazing trip.