Nara

Day 1 - Nara
We had pretty high expectations of this place, so we were both super excited! After an hour on the train, we got to Nara and our accommodation was another 30 min. walk away into Nara Park. Now I can tell you that we walked all the way up and down the park to get there, but we took a taxi instead  :).

Since we couldn't check in until 3 pm, we decided to explore the park for a bit. It was super busy, as was the rest we've been to so far. Lots of students (elementary school and high school). And as I experienced before in Osaka 2 years ago and in Nagasaki last week, there were some that had an assignment to practice their English with tourists. Dennis was up first and after a few hours a girl asked me some questions as well ending with a signature and picture.

Nara park is full of wild deer, which is one of it's main 'attractions'. Not as wild as they used to be probably, since it's the tourists that mostly feed them crackers and such, which you are able to buy along the way. They can still make sudden moves though for which you are warned. One of the deer thought it was fun to 'attack' me from behind and go under my dress, haha, scared the sh*t out of me. 

Besides seeing, petting and feeding the deer, there's also beautiful shrines and temples, but I was more interested in the deer and just walking around in nature :). 

We walked around and ended up in a sort of street market with restaurants and had an early dinner. After that we noticed we were quite close to a Sake Tasting, so we decided to see if it was still open. It took place in the Sake brewery and for 500 yen (about €3,75) you get to taste 5 different kinds of sake of which 2 won medals. The first one had little alcohol and as I started sipping mine, Dennis downed his (bottoms up). The look on the ladies face was priceless haha, she started saying 'oh no no oh oh' and I cracked up. I guess you are not suppose to down drinks at a 'tasting'. She told the other lady that was working there and they were both sort of shocked and I couldn't stop laughing. The sake got stronger and less tasty, and I only know Sake as a warm drink, these were cold.

When we finished we received the glass as a souvenir and made our way back to the hostel, which was quite a walk. Mr. Dennis, a great navigator, apparently only with Google Maps hehe, took a wrong turn, that eventually did take us back to the hostel. But I think I'll use my -paper- map again next time.

Our room at the hostel (The Deer Park Inn), another private room with a sitting area and small backyard, is great! It's sort of like a cabin and reminds me of the trip I took in elementary school to 'a cabin in the woods', which sounds really dodgy, but was fun!

We chilled at the room for at bit and went back out to see one of the buildings by night. A nice view of the city and lots of lanterns. Glad we went outside!

Day 2 Nara
Checked out early and left with our stuff towards the station, only to realize we missed one of the shrines (the one closest to us) woops. And since the sign said it was ONLY a 850m detour, we decided to still go. My trolley was not made for the road there, let alone all the steps we had to go up and down on. Dennis had to carry his bag too. So safe to say, we've definitely had our morning exercise. It was a beautiful sight though, lots of stone lanterns and we were glad we went. 

We ran into many deer on our way back to the station and some students that asked me some questions (of course followed by a photo). I bought half a loaf of bread yesterday to give to the deer, which was probably not a good idea to feed them in the morning when they've not had anything all night and there was an entire group that came at me, we quickly left after we were being ambushed and I ran out of bread to give to them.

Bye deer, bye Nara! Next stop is Kyoto, we've got 3 nights there so we'll finally be able to leave our stuff at one place for a few days and take it easy :)!

Until then,
Sayonara!