Osaka Adventure: Day 4- Miyajima and Hiroshima

Ohayogozaimasu from Osaka!  Yes, we made it back last night after a long day of travel.  Paul is still sleeping, so I decided to update the blog.  Pretty sure he caught whatever I had last week and is under the weather today.  I told him we should take it easy today and not venture out too far from our place.

Enough of the bad news... on to more fun stuff!  We checked in after dark the day before, so we didn't see how gorgeous the view was!  Look how pretty!

So yesterday I told you about how we missed out on the hotel dinner?  Well, we made up for it with the breakfast!  They had quite a spread featuring western style and japanese style breakfast items.  My first plate consisted of the western style stuff which wasn't anything special.  Hello, should've known right?  But Paul got me some miso soup which really hit the spot!  Then we tried their katsu curry, which put me over the top.  I was feeling pretty miserable after we ate.  Geez, I hardly do that nowadays, so i felt so yucky.  

But, it was worth it!  Ha ha.  After breakfast we finished packing and headed off to explore the island. We checked out and said goodbye to the nice staff at this hotel.  We had a futon room, which was probably the only downside to staying here. Other than that, I would definitely stay here again!  Let's put it this way, the room was way bigger than our Airb&b!

 So we made our way to the ropeway so that we could catch the awesome view...  More on that later.  We must've missed this torii gate when we passed by yesterday. 

Decisions, decisions.  There was a shuttle bus to take you to the ropeway, or do we take the 10 min walk?  Hmmm... remember now, 10 minutes for Japanese people = 20 minutes for the rest of us! LOL!

 We decided to "exercise" and walk.  What we don't have pictures of is the brutal path we took. It was super steep and not for pedestrians.  I'm sure the cars that passed us were thinking we are dumb tourists!


Once we made it to the ropeway, we saw that the park stroll was much nicer!

Ummm, what they fail to mention is that those steps are damn steep!

We finally made it to the ropeway!

Here's the view from our gondola...

When you get off the first gondola, they pack you into the second one.  I mean packed like rush hour in Tokyo.  We finally made it to the top and what do we see?  Nothing.

There was very little visibility when we first go there, then a cloud came and then we couldn't see anything!

That's when we decided to leave and head back to the ropeway.  I'm such a sucker for these photo ops.  LOL!

When we got off, we decided to look around the park area before heading back to the main street.   Paul did his best Kramer's pose here...

This bridge was so pretty!  Can you see me in the picture?

 

Paul was very proud of this shot since it also had the dew drop on the leaf...

 

This guy was just hanging out..

 The other night, we saw that someone drew the hanafuda card that had the deer and the momiji on a lantern!  Hello, that is perfect for this area!  I tried to replicate it in this photo...

One final shot of the park before we leave...

I think its neat that they even make their drains beautiful! 

Finally made our way back to the torii area.  Here's the temple/pagoda that we didn't have enough energy to go see. 

When we got back, it was low tide, so we decided to walk out to the torii like everyone else.

 

Now its time to eat!  We couldn't leave the area without trying more of the street food.  I wish I didn't eat so much breakfast... I'm sure I could've tried more things! 

 At first we weren't sold on the whole deep fried momiji, but we saw a video online by Only in Japan that features the Miyajima street food. You should check it out if you plan to go.  After watching the video, we thought the deep fried momiji looked like the age manju we usually get in Asakusa.  So we decided to give it a try.  Good thing we did!  It was so good when it was fresh!  We chose the custard one- it pretty much oozed out of the crust.

We decided to go back before we left to buy some to take home.  Here's the flavors they have.

 

Everyone sells that momiji, so in case you are wondering which one we went to.. its the one with this guy outside.  Cute yah?  I think he's supposed to be a deer.  And I think you are supposed to put your stick in the slot below when you are finished eating.

 

Ok, now this was not planned... I kept seeing everyone walking around eating these fishcake on a stick so I went to check it out.  They had all types of flavors and it smelled so good, that I broke down and got one.  We shared the potato bacon one and it was awesome! So awesome I'm going to try to figure out how to make it when I go home.  It might not be on a stick, but I'm thinking patties?

We were still pretty full, so after we went down the whole street, we decided on one more deep fried momiji, bought our omiyage, and headed back to the main island.  Thanks Miyajima!  We had a fun adventure!

Next, we headed back to Hiroshima Station.  Paul had read about a waterfall area off the beaten path that he wanted to check out.  Since we weren't sure we'd ever make it back here, we decided to make the trek up (another) the mountain to check it out.  Here's us halfway up the mountain.  I was hoping the bus would pick us up, but no such luck.

We finally made it!  I was so tired and sore by then.  Training at Imiloa did not help. I need to train more next time!

I love this photo Paul took of the pagoda.

I thought this was so cute.  The crafter in me liked that someone made little hats for each statue.  I think Paul told me the story about the guy who gave all the hats to the statutes cause he was cold and though they were probably cold too.  Cute yah?

That side trip really tired us out.  We were hungry by now and found the Little Mermaid bakery in the station, so we had a quick snack.

We also saw this Danish bar donut.  It was pretty good.

Oh, and I guess we didn't take a picture of the other thing I bought. I found a stand with those fishcake sticks, so I got one for the road, along with some musubis in case we get hungry.  I stayed up the entire trip for once, but look who fell asleep!

 Well, come to find out he was so tired because he's sick!  He's sleeping now, so I'm letting him rest today.  I might go check out Don K since its near the station while he sleeps.  Wish me luck!