The Mylroies: April 2009

Early last week I was talking with my friend Angela Rud who is Mark's mother (K.C.'s best friend) and she told me she was going down to Hiroshima and Kyoto alone for the weekend. I thought for about half a minute and asked if I could join. My thought was, Cameron has been there and the kids wouldn't care to see either. After a quick phone call to Cameron to see if he would be willing to take care of the kids for the weekend we made the arrangements. I cannot say enough good things about the wonderful man I am married to. He was so supportive! Even though it involved not only taking care of the kids, but making all kinds of arrangements for things he already had going on for the weekend.

Off we went in the Shinkansen on Friday morning to begin our little adventure. We started in Hiroshima, walked around The Peace Memorial Park and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms along the river. There were many people "hanami"enjoying their food and drink under the trees. For dinner we enjoyed delicious Hiroshima okonomiyaki and loved it! (I'm craving more right now).

The next morning we went to the Peace Memorial Museum. It was very interesting, but of course extremely depressing. From there we took a train and a ferry to the island Miyajima. Even though it was raining the entire time, the island was beautiful. The fog and mist made it look very mystical and ancient, like I would picture Japan of long ago. We stayed in the island enjoying the sights until our shinkansen left at 4pm for Kyoto.

After checking in, there was a little bit of time left to explore. We went to the Gion district right out of "Memoirs of a Geisha". We were lucky enough to see two, unfortunately when we saw them we were in such disbelief that we didn't get a picture.

The next morning we met Sister Judith, a wonderful nun who acted as our tour guide for the rest of the day. She was an acquaintance of Angela. It was a beautiful warm day and the crowds had come out to visit all the sights and enjoy sakura. Regardless of the crowds and the traffic, we were able to visit 5 different places. First we went to Nijo Castle and had a tour of the beautiful gardens and then the castle itself. It reminded me of the book Shogun, highly recommend it. Then we went to Kinkakuji Temple, Kyoto Handicraft Center, Heian Jingu Shrine and visited its amazing gardens. After a quick lunch we headed over to Kiyomizu-dera which was my favorite site. The walk to the shrine was a lot of fun with very quaint shops all the way. On the walk up to the shrine we also saw a few Geisha and Maiko (apprentice Geisha) and I was able to quickly get a couple of shots. Here we also encountered the crowds.

Our Shinkansen left for Tokyo at 5pm and we felt very good about ourselves having covered so much ground in such a short time. I was happy to get back home where Cameron had had his own adventures with the kids. Here is one he caught on camera:

In this picture Isa wonders "Am I in trouble?"