Weather: sunny and HUMID 19°C, high 28°C
Accommodation: Hotel Pacific Kanazawa.
As we’d had a big day the day before and had nowhere we needed to be by a certain time today, we had a bit of a relaxing start to the day. Unfortunately when I tried to shower our boy, who was SMELLY, he SCREAMED – so I hope no one in our neighbourhood was trying to have a long sleep in. We turned on the TV for Eskil, and Curious George was on!
Then 3 episodes of Shaun the Sheep!!! We eventually moseyed out to Starbucks for breakfast, and Eskil had a chocolate donut and got VERY messy (but happy).
We made our way to the Kenrokuen Gardens. We meant to walk there through the castle gardens, but the map we had showed all the routes, even the private and blocked off ones, so unfortunately I took us the wrong way. The Kenrokuen gardens had been recommended to us by Marc, who recommended Kanazawa highly and said the gardens were really stunning. They are!
The gardens were quite crowded and hot, but still very beautiful. Eskil didn’t enjoy them as much as us and escaped. Sigh. That was a stressful few minutes. After strolling through the gardens we had an ice cream break on Kenrokumachi between the gardens and the castle park.
The castle was beautiful although newly rebuilt. Scott and Eskil had a look through it while I had a break in the shade, then we explored the castle gardens a bit more.
While making our way back to the hotel we stopped at a North American café for lunch. Eskil and I shared a cheeseburger and chips (E mostly ate chips!), and Scott had a smoked sausage gumbo. Not bad at all.
It was a hot day and we’d walked a lot, so we headed back to the hotel for a rest, hoping Eskil would nap. I also did laundry in the hotel’s beautifully clean laundry room. And we had lattes from the hotel’s lobby café – bliss! While I did more wash, Scott took Eskil for a walk to the local department store. When they got back, we went for a walk at dusk to the old geisha district just over the river, Higashi Chayagai. It was beautiful, and we just wandered around while the sun set. With so many wooden buildings, it is easy to see why so few of these districts survive.
It was a seriously beautiful walk! Back at our own neighbourhood, we decided to investigate dinner at the little restaurant next to the hotel. We are SO GLAD we did! They specialise in hand made udon. Scott had a tempura chicken udon, and I had a tempura vegetable udon. Eskil loved eating lots of udon with soup. I only wish we’d tried it a night or two earlier. This wound up being Scott’s favourite mean in all of Japan.
After dinner Scott and Eskil returned to our room while I went to 7-11 for beer and supplies. The common supplies we got were: yogurt for Eskil to eat when he woke up and cashews and a certain type of cake for Eskil’s snack during the day and on trains. When I got back to the hotel I did more laundry while we showered, had beer, read, and relaxed. We slept well again.
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2015/09/26/.