Did I mention I dislike long haul flights?

I suppose its the same for most people, being cooped up in an aluminium tube with 300 people you don’t know, overnight with no bed available to you, doesn’t sound like fun. But we’re here!

We took the stroupwaffle powered city Hopper flight over to schipol, where we saw a clock that is repainted to show the passage of time, and a tiny art museum.

The long haul portion of our flight wasn’t bad by long haul standards, everyone had their own touch screen terminal to entertain themselves, seats weren’t as packed as some airlines I’ve been on, and it was a pretty quiet flight. Problem is, I generally don’t sleep when travelling, and I get the impression my travelling companions didn’t fare well either.

However, we got to Japan. Which was a happy thought as we made our way accross the airport to immigration, JR ticket office to exchange our rail passes, then jump on the Haruka express to Kyoto. Its at this point we started to understand we had a little planning problem in that we were falling asleep on the train, and were to arrive at our hotel at about eleven, but we couldn’t check in until three! At least we should be able to leave our bags until then

So we jumped in a taxi and made our way across town, passing one stunning temple on the way. Then with our bags behind the counter at the hotel, we went for an explore, finding a curious cramped street where shops, restaurants, schools and homes all sat side by side. Then, thirsty, we decided to find a coffee shop to camp out in until we could get to our beds. This is how we stmbled upon Tully’s and suspect we tried our first Murasaki roll… having at least refuelled if not refreshed, there was a little fabric shopping then we decided to camp in the hotel’s foyer as it was finally nearing check-in time.

It was then, finally, blissfully we could finally dissapear to the realm of Morpheus.