Golden Pavilion and Bamboo Grove – Greg and Mandy's Travels

After another early morning walk down to the market to visit the American-run bakery with the lovely coffee, we headed off on the bus to the other three big tourist attractions in Kyoto.

The idea was that we would get to the Golden Pavilion a little earlier than all of the tour groups, but the coffee must’ve been too good, and we arrived at the same time as every school group in Japan was being disgorged from their school buses, all resplendent in their various coloured caps for identification, and being sternly marshalled by their flag waving guide at the head of the procession. The guides tried very hard to keep their school groups together, which is good in theory, but really had the effect of creating a humongous tightly packed line that no single tourist could permeate.

When you put a dozen or so of these tightly packed groups end to end, and start marching them up the steps, then try to assemble them all to get a photo, it makes it hard work for everybody else. Rather than spend a quiet time in contemplation of the serenity of the Golden Pavilion, you spend your time jostling to get to the front to actually get a photo.

Sounds like I’m grumbling, and I suppose I am a bit, and there’s not much anybody can do about it because it’s so popular, but it’s not really the quiet and tranquil experience that you hope for. In reality, we are in a lovely city in a lovely country looking at amazing things. It’s just that thousands of other lucky tourists are doing the same thing.

Regardless, the pavilion really does look golden, and it’s very impressive, and after taking photos from any vantage point we could get to, and admiring the gardens as we walked around, we soon found ourselves at the end of the one-way path and out the exit gate.

Maybe we’d have a better time, we thought, when we get to the bamboo grove, but by this time it was late morning, and the grove was busy with every other tourist who hadn’t gone to see the temple.

The bamboo grove is a natural forest of bamboo, which is beautiful to look at, but it’s designed for quiet, contemplative meditation as you walk through it. Right! An endless stream of humanity walked up the hill through the grove, stopping to take lots of photos on the way, and I’m told it wasn’t even terribly busy today. At least there weren’t bus loads of school kids on the path.

Emerging from the other end of the grove, we descended the hill to the river, and looked at the historical wooden bridge, before walking back through all of the souvenir shops to the train station to retrace our steps.

Stopped for a nice lunch at a Subway-like café, then took the bus to the third attraction of the day – the Imperial Palace.

Although you need an invitation to get inside on one of the few days that it’s open to visitors, you are able to walk around the extensive gardens and look at the outside, which we did. As usual, it’s fairly large, though not on the same size as the Forbidden City by any means.

Turns out that the palace is only a few blocks from our hotel, so we ended up back there mid afternoon.

Hit up a lovely Indian restaurant close by for dinner in an effort to ingest some vegetables that we have been rather missing.