Kyoto day 1

Today we spent the day hiking up the Fushimi Inari Shrine. It took about 3 hours to get to the summit, through thousands of red Japanese gates. It was very beautiful, but hard work.

The hike up to the top was easy to start with, and we were able to use the pram up the paths. There were a couple sets of stairs that we carried the pram up (with him in it). Along the way there are small temples that are marked with numbers 1-12. At temple 5, we had to leave the pram and continue with Robin strapped into the baby carrier. From here, it got gradually more steep. As the trail got higher, there were less people, and the red gates were stunning in the quiet mountain forest. At stop 8 or 9, we had a choice to get to the summit – a 25 minute walk or 15 minute. We chose the 25 minute walk, which was really lovely until the last part, where it was just very steep stairs to the summit. We made it to the top where a fit boy said I was amazing for getting to the top carrying Robin! It was hard work, but we felt amazing afterwards. We were also told that we were brave parents for attempting it with a baby. It was nice to receive admiration from strangers! On our way back down, we stopped for a beer and ice-cream. Robin loved the ice-cream!

Once we got all the way down to the bottom again, we had a few things on sticks to eat for lunch and then continued into the next temple which was a 20 minute walk – at least it was flat!

Unfortunately, we got there at exactly 4:30, which is the time that the gates to the temple shut. Oh well. We continued our walk back to the train station then to the hotel to have a much needed shower and change of clothes before heading out for dinner.

Gabi & Michael had suggested a restaurant to us, so we thought we would try and find it. It was another 30 min walk, and we just couldn’t find the restaurant they were talking about. By this stage, it was getting past 8:30, so we just settled for a meal that wasn’t that great. At least we tried to find it!

At the summit! We made it!