We spent 3 days in Kyoto, Japan! We had two destinations Monkey Mountain and Fushimi Inari Shrine. Everything else happened while just exploring!

We walked the alley ways the first night after a day of traveling via the shinkanesen. We found some open shrines and a neat antique shop. Of course we checked out the local Lawson 100 and got some dinner!

We started our first full day pretty early. We found a coffee vending machine in the train station and it quickly became our favorite! It was really good coffee too! We took two trains and a trolley to get to Arashiyama. The train stain was where we saw kimono forest. This was super neat. The pool at the end of it had a plaque that talked about cleansing your hands in the water. It was freezing water but I got my hands in there. We made our way through the town and walked to Monkey Mountain. This was our favorite experience! We could have spent hours here! The monkeys were so entertaining to watch! It was a long walk up the mountain and they were very strict with the rules but if you pay attention and follow the rules you’ll have a great time.

We walked back down the mountain and through the famous bamboo forest. Luckily it wasn’t super crowded like I’ve seen but still a lot of people.

The Fushimi Inari shrine was the only other thing on our actual agenda. We did this on the second full day in Kyoto. We walked all the way to the top and so glad we did. It wasn’t crowded once you passed the first main look out. I managed to get some super cool photos on my nice camera and we really got to enjoy the torii gates in peace. The top was anticlimactic as there was a shrine but no cool look out.

We had fun just wandering through the streets of Kyoto. We saw a few shrines and I even got up early the last day to try to get some sunrise photos are one of the famous shrines. Social media really has ruined some spots as there are so many people flooding to those places. Regardless Kyoto was my favorite place but the rest of the family didn’t really appreciate the architecture and culture of the city.