Walking throughout Kyoto calms me. Although it's been quite cold, I find tranquility in walking the streets of this traditional city. As we've been traveling, I always try to find a comparison between cities in terms of it's city spread or just the overall ambiance it has with another city or area. With Kyoto, I couldn't find one. This city is so unique, one that I have never been to before... and I like it!
I really enjoy the traditional architecture here as well. It's so beautiful peeking into alleyways and feeling the sense of time travel. Many of the homes and businesses in the Gion district (where we are staying) are made of wood complimented with Shoji doors and dividers. We've also come across many women and (some) men in traditional Japanese dress.
Today, we resided in a beautiful castle! Alright folks, this is not the type of castle you're imagining. I'm not going to go into depth about the contrasts between medieval castles and traditional Japanese ones, since I'm not prepared with facts, but I will show pictures of this gorgeous place!
Duh, a moat to prevent enemies from entering
Castles always have gardens here
Castle doors
An aerial view of Nijo castle
As we wrapped up our castle visit, we wandered a bit more and came across another shrine:
Kyoto has incredible history and an outstanding number of shrines and temples: 74 temples and 30 shrines. As ambitious as some travelers would like to be to hit up all these sights, I'm sure by the 20th temple, they'd be exhausted. I'm pretty content with the few that we've seen so far.
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