Andre and Wendy: Kanazawa

Today we moved on from Hiroshima to Kanazawa. This involved 3 trains, and our most expensive day yet of travel, I think our longest travel day too.

We had purchased the tickets from a “live” person earlier in the week when we got to Hiroshima. Didn't want to try the ticket booth as we knew it would be confusing. Glad we did this as she gave us 3 tickets that we had to insert all 3 each time into the machine before and after boarding the train. By the end of the day the machines had taken all of tickets away from us. Our last train ride we had to run to make the connection, it was so busy in the station 8 minutes did not give us much time to transfer. But we made it. 5 hours of trains and we are now in Kanazawa and have one more Shinkansen train under our belt.

Some major confusion at the train station in Kanazawa as we were trying to book a bus to Takayama our next stop and it is all sold out for April 2. I had read to prebook, no idea we needed to do it this early. So, back to the train station from the bus terminal and there are issues along the line to Takayama. I remembered I had seen a tour that goes from Kanazawa to Takayama in my research, so we got booked on that. I booked through getyourguide, so I'm guessing this reseller books up spots on the busses and then it is sold out. A little frustrating, but now we have a little tour to an area we were going to visit later in the week anyway, now we will just do it on our way to Takayama.

That drama over and we are off to our AIRBNB. We have a little AIRBNB booked here, but it is like a major suite in size after our tiny hotel rooms we have been staying in. This is only the 2^nd of 3 AIRBNB we have this trip. The problem with these here is it is very strict on check in times, which has always been 3pm. So what do you do with your luggage? In a hotel they have always had luggage checks so it hasn't been any problem. Anyway it all worked out because we only arrived here after 3, but we do need to deal with our luggage when we leave as it is well past 10 that we catch our bus, check out has always been 10AM

Grabbed a pork steam bun on the walk to our airbnb, not sure if that was lunch or supper. Walked through the market that we know we will be going back to visit again, most things are closing up now at 4PM.

After we got settled in the apartment we ventured out to explore the city a little. Visited a couple of shrines that we just came across. Met up with Heather around the castle area, then walked to the Samurai region of Kanazawa. All of these need to be visited again in the daylight. A long travel day and we call it a night early. Picked up some things at a grocery store tomorrow for breakfast and looked at the weather for tomorrow, yuck. Luckily I saw at tourist information at the train station that you can just borrow umbrellas, so we each now have an umbrella as well. Hotels have always had umbrellas for us, we weren't sure about our AIRBNB.

Steps 18,920 / 11.8kms

Street Car to the train station

We needed 3 tickets to travel today. Interesting that you have to feed the 3 tickets into the machine together, every time they come out the other side one of the tickets has been taken. Glad we purchased the tickets from an information desk so she could tell us how this all worked

Bento Boxes for sale outside the train. You are not allowed to eat on most trains, but these fast trains it is OK

Frozen Creme Brule before the train ride, yummy

Always fun to try to read the signs to make sure you are getting on the correct train, and going the right direction. They do eventually switch to English, but it doesn't last long