Today started with a spritzing of rain which turned to a downpour. This was disappointing, because today we visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine, an outdoor park with thousands of orange torii gates. These beautiful gates snake up a mountainside that our guide told us would take about two hours to walk. We only had an […]
This morning, we traveled from Kanazawa to Kyoto via the Thunderbird train. It’s not the bullet train most folks think of when they think of Japan (that’s the Shinkansen), but it was still fast and comfortable. It got us to Kyoto around lunchtime, where our tour guide had a special meal planned for us. Lunch […]
On our bus ride to Kanazawa this morning, our tour guide showed us a video on the art of Sake brewing. During our tasting yesterday, the complexity of the brew process for Sake was lost on us, but today we fully appreciated the skill that goes into creating Japan’s famous rice-wine. Since rice itself doesn’t […]
After a filling breakfast at the hotel, we made our way to Takayama for shopping in a historic market. At about 10 o’clock in the morning, our group stopped into a sake brewery for a tasting (we were confused about timing too, but the Japanese seem to have a more lax attitude towards alcohol in […]
After breakfast at our hotel, I spent some time wandering around The New Otani’s Japanese garden. This carefully manicured sanctuary featured waterfalls, Shinto gates, statues, lots of Koi fish, perfect flowers, crimson bridges, and more. After my stroll through the garden, I joined our tour group to visit the imperial palace in Tokyo. Our tour […]
The first day of our guided tour began with a visit to the Sensoji Buddhist temple in Tokyo. With the help of our guide, we took part in rituals like cleansing ourselves at the basin, getting a fortune from inside the temple (we didn’t get good fortunes—yikes), covering ourselves with holy smoke from incense, and […]
Today the workers of London’s tube system are on strike. We decided to make the best of our situation, however, and toured London by walking and bussing around. We started the day with a visit to the gates of Buckingham palace where we watched part of the changing of the guard. You wouldn’t really expect […]
On today’s schedule, we had a food tour on which we would sample fine Parisian cuisine. I found out about Secret Food tours through TripAdvisor and I highly recommend it. First, we met with our guide, Nichol, who gave us a bit of a culinary history of Paris. Then we went to our first stop–an […]
We began our day with a short Metro ride to the Louvre, Paris’ (and perhaps the world’s) premier art gallery. The museum is huge, and I could easily see myself spending more than a day exploring it. The Louvre has invested a lot in making visits interesting and informative. While it’s easy to get lost […]
I’ve made it here to Geneva, Switzerland and nearly everything is beautiful here save for two things: the weather (it’s around 100°F here during the hottest parts of the day) and the prices (Switzerland is insanely expensive–at my hotel it’s 39.- CHF for a breakfast buffet!). Lake Geneva and everything that surrounds it is gorgeous. […]