Kyoto, Day Two

Seeing the view outside our window in the morning was pretty damn amazing.  It is so beautiful.  

They served us breakfast in our room.  Quite civilized.

We hopped on the boat after breakfast, got into a car and drove to Nara for the day.

Nara was the capital of Japan back in 764 AD (roughly).  Then the capital moved to Kyoto and then Tokyo.  Nara is infested with tame deer that come down from them mountains during the day and return at night.  It is definitely freaky considering deer have become such a major problem in many areas in the states.  

This particular deer decided he was going to go shopping.

Nara Park is filled with a few places worth seeing.  The park is really beautiful too.  This is the first building before heading thru to Todai-ji.  

You can see from these pillars how old this place is.

Here is Todai-ji built thousands and thousands of years ago.

Check out this buddha.  He is HUGE.  You can't really appreciate how enormous he is from this photo.

There are a few of these other statues on the otherside of the building.

It was a beautiful day outside and we walked over to the other shrines up the hill.  Kasuga Taisha.  Here are some people praying.  

We finally walked back down into the town for lunch.  Izasa is in a parking lot but has a big window that overlooks the park and shrine so the right place.  We had some sashimi.

Fried chicken with a sauce.  

A mixture of different items to taste; a deconstructed bento box. As usual, some good, some not so good.

We drove back into Kyoto and stopped at Cafe Independants for a coffee.

And an afternoon sweet.

The trip at this point was weighing on everyone.  Two days in Kyoto would have been plenty.  Also, the language barrier is exhausting.  Even the food, atlhough some amazing meals, starts to get old.  We were staying at Hoshinoya that night and going back there to hang was just not happening.  Too far and not that hangable.  We just walked around for awhile.  Could not imagine staying another two days here