The wandering begins

Breakfast, packing and we’re on our way. We are organised enough to reach the station early and pick ourselves up a cup of coffee, or in my case, vanilla and macha milkshake.

Hikari line to shin-Kobe, then the sakura line down to Hiroshima. We found here the perils of not booking seats as while we could sit, many others had to retreat to the unreserved carriage or stand in the corridors between carriages. This was possibly made worse as the sakura line seems to use a 2-2 seat layout, where hikari used 3-2, so I think it has fewer seats. Cool advert for sake though.

Dropping our cases at the hotel we sought out some lunch, and found it in the form of a japanese take on italian? I got a cured meat sandwich, it was tasty enough so I wont complain! Then a nose around another covered shopping district, before making our way back to check in. The hotel was quite the surprise though, we had to check the price as it seemed too nice! The rooms are very japanese style with a mini corridor with the loo and bath in seperate rooms. It has convinced me that I’d like to build one like this when I get my own house…

Finally, for the evening, we sought out a ramen shop, and ended up in an izakaya by accident! Certainly a local place, no English to be seen, and too many kanji for me to read left us at the mercy of an app, and our hosts limited range of English. Still, we got some tasty food and the beer was nice enough.