And ‘Er Indoors had found a good deal for the one night.
The second place had been chosen for ease of transfer to and from the train to Osaka, remembering our return was probably going to be rather late.
The third spot gave easy access to trains to Kyoto (both the local service that delivered us into the Kyotic cherry-blossom Sunday and the shinkansen that was the first leg of the big loop journey.
Once back in Kobe, we’d stayed right next door to Shin-Kobe station for Sunday night, close to somewhere we could eat and more or less on the way to The Mother’s place.
And where we were headed for the night might have been a fair step from Sannomiya station but offered a substantial Viking breakfast which we thought would be handy in terms of the following day’s travel plans (in other words we probably wouldn’t need to eat until the evening).
Once we’d booked in for the night it was off to meet Gomi-san and Sakai-san (or so we thought, a late email en route to the rendezvous advised that Sakai-san was a late scratching) and once we’d arrived at the building, it was a case of into the lift, up to the 28th floor, and negotiating the important matter of free drinks for the night.
Actually, the use of the term free drinks is misleading. There was a one-off charge (1200-yen for males, 900-yen for females) but any bloke who can’t manage to knock over a bit over twelve Australian dollars’ worth of grog in three and a half hours doesn’t qualify as a serious drinker.
Faced with a choice of beer, sake, basic spirits and wine we decided to stick with the wine, where there was a selection of four reds and four whites (Rosemount Estate Jigsaw labels included) and out of the Italian and Californian wines we tried there was nothing to match the quality we’d come to expect at around the Rosemount Jigsaw price point.
Dinner was another Viking affair and, while it wasn’t the greatest spread I’ve ever seen there was plenty to eat and quite good value for money.
Having eaten, we sat around chewing the fat and savouring the sangiovese that we’d agreed was the pick of the non-Oz wines on offer until the management called Time and we decided to draw stumps and decant ourselves into the darkness.