Nara

After our very emotion filled day in Hiroshima, we headed out to another one of my favorite city in Japan, the historical city of Nara. While planing for this trip, I was really excited by the prospect of bringing Hudson and Tristan to Nara... The city with the deers crossing at the intersection (while obeying the pedestrian signal...) But after our little mishap with the deers in Miyajima, I started to be a bit more concern about having to face hundreds if not thousands of deers in the city. So we headed out in mid-morning and got there right at lunch time.

We first grabbed lunch, and since Hudson decided she ONLY wanted to walk, it took us all afternoon to make the trek to the Daibustu temple. By the time we got there, it was closing but we managed to sneak in with the last few people. The place was so empty it gave us great opportunities to take lots of pictures. 

 

And that is pretty much the only think we saw in Nara... We had plan on temple hopping, but with an eight months old baby that only wanted to walk, it slowed us down tremendously. Still we had a blast as Hudson tried to catch deers, and even fed one.

Nara

In hope of beating the tourist rush madness, we hoped early on a train and headed for Nara. We were expecting another Kyoto type of day with it's share of frustration.

Just as we thought, as early as 9 am, the place was already crowded with tourists. From the station, we fallowed the flow of people and walked straight towards the Daibustu. We passed a few temples and a 5 story pagodas. We stopped to take a few pictures with the deers. Pet some of them. Then reached the giant boudha (daibustsu).

The entrance fee was 500 yen but it was well worth it. I know there are a few daibustsu in Japan but it was my first time seeing any of them. It is very impressive. We made our way around the temple and found a fundraiser activity where for 1000 yen you could write a message on a tile that would then be used to renovate the roof of the temple. We thought it was a cool idea so we did one and wrote a little message from our Plastre Langlois family.  We took many pictures and kept on walking around the town to visit a few more temples.

In all, it was a 3 hours walk through nice scenery. As the day went on, as the tour bus arrived, it started getting overly crowded but by then we were done. Getting there early proved to be a great decision!

In the afternoon, Marie went for a haircut as I roamed around arcade games. We finished our day in Nara with a Purikura and a good tonkatsu meal.

In all it was a nice day, well worth the trip.