Heavy rain

Day 17

Heavy rain STOP Bye, bye Kyoto STOP Plan to go to Inuyama aborted due to weather STOP Still raining STOP Shinkansen Hikari to Odawara (2h15min) STOP Romancecar train to Hakone-Yumoto (15min) STOP Still raining STOP Tozan Railway to Gora (40min) STOP Tozen Cablecar to Souzen (10min) STOP Still raining STOP Ropeway to Owakudani (10min) STOP Ropeway to Ubako (10min) STOP Heavy rain STOP Finally arrival at hotel STOP

A miserable day! We were tired from so much changing transports and carrying heavy backpacks. Rain non-stop all day! Feet wet.

So today was all about travelling out of Kyoto and to our next destination: Hakone, an area in the mountains, an onsen, an hotel with views to Mount Fuji from their outdoor baths. A hard trip with plenty of public transportation but with a promissing reward. We needed a night of rest!

Rest, onsen, dinner. That was pretty much the rest of the day.

No view from the cablecar or ropeway to the surrounding mountains or Mount Fuji as advertised. Weather was not cooperating. Tozan Railway is a small mountain train that works on a single track in a man-made mountain trek. Nice!

The hotel's onsen has a good outside bath but, unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see Mount Fuji. Indoor bath was too hot so I relaxed on the outdoor one. 

The outside bath has a bamboo cover so you don't get the rain whilst you are in the bath but you could see the rain falling on the small garden around. It was also a bit windy and the wind made some interesting horizontal whirlwinds with the water vapour from the bath, just at the surface of the water. Quiet and relaxing!

My legs are suffering with so much walk so I did some massaging in the water. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Check out the onsen and the allegged view of Mount Fuji here: http://www.hgp.co.jp/language/english/sp/hotspring.html

Dinner was at the hotel, a East meets West kaiseki dinner. Average with some weird mix. Bamboo smoothie (pureed bamboo root) was awful! One of the deserts was cherry perfume soda. A (supposed) cherry blossom flavoured drink to which you add an effervescent vitamin B tablet (?!?) to make it bubble and it turns from pink to blue. It looked like a chemistry experiment but it tasted foul!

Jorge tried Sapporo beer and liked it, saying it was similar to Super Bock. Manuel had a plum liquor which we knew to be good and I tried a peach liquor which was marvellous, a bit like a smoothie.

I was so tired that I laid in bed after dinner not to wake up again.