Day 15 A Shrine, The Imperial Palace and a show

This morning  was our last full day in Kyoto, after dropping our luggage at reception to be forwarded on to our next hotel, we took the metro to Fushimi Inari Taisha, a Shinto Shrine dating from 711 A.D featuring a path with hundreds of Torii gates (and thousands of visitors!)

walking up the familiarly crowded main street lined with shops and food stalls all doing brisk business even at 10 a.m

The Shrine, but people really come to see the hundreds of Torii gates.

Not sure how we managed to get a photo without any people in as it was still very crowded at the top of the hill.

An old tea house near the top, unfortunately no longer serving tea.

We then walked to another station, the crowds were still arriving by the train load, we headed to The Imperial Palace and grounds, 

Decided to stop for some lunch before visiting the Place and found this little place opposite one of the entrances, it doesn't even look like a restaurant, let alone an open one, but we've learnt a lot over the last couple of weeks!

 

The menu was ramen or ramen so we had ramen! Really tasty.

Fortified we wandered around the Palace gardens

A few spots of rain today, but nothing much

and then into the Palace grounds

and through the gardens

We then caught the bus to the Gion District, where we had our walking tour on our first evening. Late afternoon we went to The Gion Kobu Kaburenjo Theatre for a short tea ceremony, which it certainly was! Very disappointing, two geikos on a stages performing a tea ceremony completely detached from those of us in the room. We had a small cake on a plate waiting for us (got to keep the plate) and a bowl of matcha tea brought to us, all over and done with in 5 minutes, no photos allowed. A bit pointless really.

We then waited around half an hour for the show. It's called The Miyako-Odori and was first performed in Kyoto in 1875 as a part of a drive to encourage tourism. It's one of the four great spring shows in the Gion District featuring Maikos, Geikos and muscians. No photography allowed during the show but we were able to get a couple before the start. The set and the costumes were very impressive.

After the show we headed back to the hotel, stopping off for our second visit to a local Italian restaurant for a very tasty meal.

So far we are averaging 20,000 steps a day, on our busiest day we walked 10.5 miles. Glad that we brought our walking shoes!