Paerika's Globetrotting Adventures: Kyoto (or "How to overdose on temples...")

Kyoto might be Japans most famous tourist sight with its over 2000 temples and shrines. Whenever you see a photo from, read about or hear someone talk about Kyoto it is always about temples and shrines.

Arriving in Kyoto you therefore (at least we did) expect to step out of the train and straight into street after street with only temples and Japanese gardens. Instead you are met by the busy streets and apartment blocks of a city with 1.4 million people. However, once you start exploring the streets you discover temples and shrines almost everywhere. Some very small, tucked in between two concrete buildings from the sixties and some very large with enormous Japanese gardens that go on for acres. Once you enter these gardens it is like the busy city outside ceases to exist (unless you happened to end up in one of the most crowded tourist temples).

We really appreciated this mixture of both modern city and old temples and shrines. It is only possible to take in a certain amount of temples a day and it was nice to be able to escape from it every now and then. For example being able to find a sports bar so Pär could watch the rugby world cup final!