The switches between hotel and subway station, subway and JR line and, finally, between Kyoto Station and the Century Hotel ran like clockwork and, having checked in, we found ourselves with a couple of hours that could be devoted to a temple visit.
And, just across the river, definitely within walking distance, we had Sanjūsangen-dō, one of the leading attractions if temples are the kind of thing that floats your boat. A little further up the road Chishaku-in offers another option, and there's a national museum across the road, but that was undergoing renovations.
In any case, we've adopted a policy of limiting ourselves to one (or two if they're reasonably close) sightseeing options per day.
And as far as Sanjūsangen-dō is concerned, one is almost definitely enough.
Go anywhere else afterwards and the second site will probably pale in comparison, head elsewhere first and then on to Sanjūsangen-dō and you'll probably end up consigning the earlier visit to the deep recesses of vague memory.
Here’s a prime example. Until I went back to look at the photographic record I’d forgotten all about this…
Walking gives you the opportunity to pick up on other things along the way, and an old guy standing on the footpath, and a reference to a free display caused us to turn left into a ground floor shop front in downtown Kyoto where we found a group of people intent on reviving aspects of the city’s cultural heritage promoting a project to restore traditional procession floats.
Or floats for traditional processions, either way you probably catch my drift and I need a context to slot these first couple of photos into, don’t I?
As you can probably gather from the background, this recreation is impressively huge, and should present an imposing sight as it makes its way through downtown Kyoto once it is finished.
Across the river and up the hill we had a choice of entrances once we’d reached the desired destination, but we looped around the perimeter fence rather than going in through what turned out to be the exit.