Westwards

Bukhara – our sightseeing highlights from numerous travels over the last 14 years

We visited Uzbekistan for the first time in 2004, but we had been dreaming about travelling there since 1992 when we accidentally laid hands on an Intourist sightseeing brochure about the country. And it turned out the monuments, such as the Kalon Minaret in Bukhara and the Registan in Samarkand, were even more awesome than we had imagined. Since then, we have returned many times on private trips, research journeys for our travel guide book "DuMont Reise-Handbuch Usbekistan" (in German), and as tour guides for German tour groups.

Last July, we did another four week research trip for the guide book's new edition and still found new favourite places, both for sightseeing and enjoyment. And now we feel it is time to share our list of personal highlights in the UNESCO World Heritage site Bukhara from years of travel:

Tourist sights

The whole old town of Bukhara is basically an open-air museum and you can spend hour after hour just strolling around. If you are in for shopping you will find fabrics, carpets, ceramics, miniatures, hand-made knives and so on: To get a fair price, you have to haggle fiercely! As for the tourist must-sees, every travel guide book lists them – but having seen them all, we recommend especially the Mausoleum of the Samanides and the Kalon minaret.

Mausoleum of the Samanides

The Mausoleum of the Samanides, dating from around 900, is one of the oldest Islamic mausoleums in the whole world (building pompous tombs was not considered proper in early Islam). Almost cubic, it is quite small and, at first sight, plain – without the glazed tiles so common in Uzbek architecture. But the brick patterns and the harmonious proportions are superb. Inside there are always pilgrims and you can join into their prayers for Ismail Samani, who is buried here. We like it for the architectural beauty, the setting in a park, and for the fact that it is not only a tourist spot but also a living pilgrims' site.

Kalon Minarett

Like the Samanid mausoleum, the Kalon Minaret is made of bricks and also very old: The 12^th century Kalon Minaret with its height of over 45 m was such an engineering feat that Genghis Khan who destroyed most of Bukhara at the beginning of the 13^th century in his raids, left it standing . Today you can only admire it from below, but when we travelled Uzbekistan in 2004, on our first visit to Bukhara, we could still climb up the narrow dark spiral staircase.

At the Zindan, the old citadel prison, there's a small postcard shop where we bought a black and white photo of the partially destroyed minaret after the Soviet victory in 1920: Soldiers of the Red Army riding in front of the Kalon minaret on one of the elephants from the private zoo of the last Emir of Bukhara.

Hoja Zaynuddin Mosque

Not many tourists visit this community mosque in the alleys of the old town, but we love the beautiful 16^th century interior with intricate patterns on the tiles and kundal paintings. Unlike many tourist places in Bukhara, Hoja Zaynuddin Mosque is not over-restored and not full of souvenir stalls, but an operating place of worship. Moreover it has a tranquil, pleasant atmosphere and is surrounded by a carved summer mosque and a garden. Entrance is free; do not visit during prayer times.

Paikent

Silk Road history is one of the reasons we were fascinated by Uzbekistan in the first place. Up until the 8^th century, Sogdian traders who travelled all over the neighbouring countries were the beneficiaries of the Silk Road trade. Paikent was one of their main towns. There are only ruins left of Paikent, but the town is excavated and can be visited. Paikent is more accessible than Varakhsha, another silk-road town in the area, and the finds in the on-site museum bring the city alive.

Food and accommodation

Beer garden behind Bolo Hauz

Our favourite place to chill in the centre of Bukhara is the open air beer garden behind the Bolo Hauz mosque. The beer from the tap is fresh, most customers are locals and for carnivores there is shashlik, too. 

Dilkor Laghman Center

While food within the touristy old town is average at best, there are some real finds if you venture a bit further. The Dilkor Laghman Center in the fifth micro-rayon is the new big thing: a huge hall serving yummy Uighur noodles in spicy broth. They have also a good variety of fresh salads (brought to the table to choose from) and beer from the tap.
Address: Corner of Pindastgir Street/ Alisher Navoi Street, 5th Mikro-rayon, Monday to Saturday 10-22 h. A taxi from the old town should cost around 5000 Som.

Old Buchara

Bukhara has an enormous range of accommodation options, but only a fraction of them are old and authentic, comfortable, and well-run. A new one we highly recommend is the small Hotel Old Buchara, run by a very friendly Tajik family.  Their breakfast is great – at least for vegetarians.

Minzifa

Minzifa was one of the first Boutique hotels in Bukhara and is still one of the best for mid-range travellers. Their rooms are so comfortable and decorated with traditional textiles, wall paintings, and carvings that you feel instantly at home. Again - we especially like the breakfast (with a lot of fresh fruit)

Komil

Another longstanding place and excellent choice in the old town is Komil. Komil's is situated in an old Jewish merchant's home with restored rooms that are fitted with new bathrooms. The dining room still has an ancient feel and oozes atmosphere.

Other things we like in Bukhara

We do admire the glorious visitors' toilet in the Summer Palace. It is at the end of the premises behind the pool and the harem building.

What we also like is the small bread bakery near Ulug Beg Madrasa close to the tourist spots. 

As elsewhere in Uzbekistan, we always appreciate the decorative flower beds from basil and Thai basil which also smell good. Practically nobody in Uzbekistan uses basil as a seasoning.

What a hilarious experience to discover a working, although very, very slow Wifi in city bus No. 8! And that was even two years ago!

Our most impressive experience this year was when the dragon staffing the cashier for the citadel suddenly told us the correct price in 2018 – after years of haggling with her inflated demands whenever foreign travellers showed up. It is 15 000 Sum per person (as of July 2018). 

And of course we have to visit the Kalon Complex after nightfall at least once during each visit. The Kalon mosque is always open and you might be able to sneak in for a while. Otherwise you can just sit on the open area and dream of the Orient and the old Silk Road. Easy if you have the stars and the moon above you.

Note: We did not receive payment or sponsoring for this article from any of the above mentioned places. We make our living by writing travel guidebooks, travel content and by our work as tour guides. The blog is independent and we do not generate any money out of it. But – we appreciate your feedback!

A trip to the shores of the Aral Sea (in Uzbekistan)

How to swim in a dying sea

The water is shallow, and the ground covered with soft mud. Wading through it, we sink into it with a slurping sound, sometimes up to our knees. And finally, about 30 m into the shallow water, we are able to lie down and drift. But swimming is still not possible: Because of the high concentration of salt, arms and legs bounce out of the water as soon as we try to make some swimming stroke, and we only end splashing ourselves (and our fellow-travellers) with salt water.

The Aral Sea is actually an undrained inland lake, which is why all the water coming into the lake evaporates at some point, leaving behind lots of salts and minerals. Just like the Dead Sea, the remaining water in the Aral Sea has a very high salinity, and that's why human bodies don't sink into the water so much.

The salty water is also the reason why no fish can survive in the lake (and not a lot of other animals, either). But the Aral Sea is not only dead, but also dying: The enormous lake used to be about the size of Ireland. Massive irrigation and the diversion of water from the two rivers replenishing the lake – Amudarya and Syrdarya – led to a shrinking of the surface over the course of the 20^th century. By now, there are only two small arms of the former lake left, with a total surface of about a tenth the original size.

To reach the water, we have to take a tour from the regional capital Nukus, sharing the cost of a 4WD with other travellers to cross the desert now covering the former sea bed. Even when the Aral Sea was still a prospering fishery location it was surrounded by the Karakum and Kizilkum deserts, but roads led along the delta of the Amudarya River to towns at the seashore. Nowadays, the river bed is dry, and we follow sand pists along the Ustyurt Plateau on the western shore of the former lake. Below us, occasional saltwater ponds dot the desert which has been given a new name: Aralkum, the Aral Desert.

Along the journey we come by the site of a former labour camp, where Tsarist Russia sent prisoners to work in the fishery industry.

Apart from a ruined factory building, the orthodox Christian graves are all that remains. Elsewhere, we pass a nomadic cemetery overgrown with wild thyme, with a mix of Arabic inscriptions and shamanist runes and totem signs – the local population is Muslim in name, but many pre-Islamic customs are still common practice.

Eventually, a large body of water comes into view, more than 300 km from Nukus. Two yurt camps have been installed not far from the edge of the water, but first our drivers stop a little distance from the lake, occupying themselves with the cars (for privacy, presumably), while the tourists strip and head into the water.

As we happened to arrive in Nukus in a heat wave even in terms of Uzbek summer, the Aral Sea felt pleasant and refreshing although it had almost bathtub temperature – quite the spa experience. Afterwards, we had a (quite water-saving) hand-pump shower in the tourist yurt camp where we spent one night.

The next day, we took a different route along the dry bottom of the former sea bed, arriving at Moynak, a former sea shore town, at lunch time. The old port town is famous for its cemetery of ships – fishing trawlers that were stranded when the water disappeared. The rusty boats (those that haven't been pilfered for scrap metal) are lined up near the Aral Sea Monument, as a memento to the doomed Sea. They are now a major tourist attraction.

How to take a tour:

We went on a Two-day/one-night trip with Ayimtour in Nukus, which included 4xe4 transport, accommodation in one of the yurt camps, and food. The tourist camp has only opened recently and was very clean and comfortable and the food was really tasty. We are vegetarians and that did not pose any problems. Additional costs were some entrance fees, but formal sightseeing is rather limited. Ayimtour tries to match your visit with other tourist to share the costs. Have a look at their website: www.ayimtour.com.

If you start your trip from Nukus you will need accommodation before and perhaps after the tour. Most travellers will stay at one of the Jipek Joly Hotels that work with Ayim Tours. A decent and cheaper alternative is the Art Hotel (Turtkul Prospekt,behind Restaurant Versal, +998 61 222 46 46). 

However you have to make your way to Nukus first. Another possibility is to take a tour from Khiva. Especially if you are looking for other travellers to share the costs it might be easier to find someone in Khiva. In that case the tour operator sends you by normal car to Nukus, where you change to a jeep. Surprisingly, some of the sightseeing tours from Khiva are slightly cheaper in spite of the longer distance. You will have two very long days, but on the other hand also save the costs of getting to and from Nukus. You can organize your trip in Khiva for instance via the Tourist Information Office, Hotel Old Khiva, or Hotel Silk Road.

***We paid the full price of the tour ourselves (170 $ p/P) and we did not receive any sponsoring from Ayimtours (our group got invited to a vegetarian dinner after the tour, though).*

If you are interested in off-the-beaten track travel destinations in Uzbekistan, check out our posts about an old Soviet solar furnace at Paikent (near Tashkent) and a visit to two forgotten Silk Road towns near Buchara.

Highlights of a weekend in Bologna

Earlier this summer we did a weekend trip to Bologna – just because it was one of the most reachable cities south of the Alps for us, about 7 hours by bus. One of those historical North-Italian cities that are generally pleasant to explore, Bologna is also a city that we hadn't been to already.

Before we went, we consulted a travel guidebook, Bologna City's website, and some other online resources and blogs – coming up with a mix of sights, exhibitions and food that sounded interesting. In the end, some of the experiences we liked most were those that we hadn't seen in any of our resources for preparing the trip, while we wouldn't have found others without the preparation (both online and offline).

Back in Berlin we ranked our five favourite travel experiences, each giving five points to the best, four to the second and so on. In the end we came up with eight activities and sights that impressed us.

So here comes the list of our top-ranked Bologna sites and activities:

No. 1: Japanese woodblock print exhibition at the Palazzo Albergati (10 points)

Searching for special exhibitions in Bologna, Natascha had come across a Japanese-themed exhibition: Giappone: storie d’amore e guerra” (Japan. Tales of love and war) at the Palazzo Albergati in Via Saragozza. We knew we wanted to see it but we hadn’t expected it to be quite as fantastic. The exhibition – mostly of woodblock prints from 19^th and early 20^th century – came out on top of our list of highlights. All exhibits were from a private collection, well-presented, with an interesting focus on items from Bakumatsu and Meiji periods, i.e. rather late examples of ukiyo-e woodblock printing. We just loved it.

No 2: A glass of ecological red wine in the porticoes of Oberdan Street (7 points)

The many porticoes of the Old Town were of course mentioned in all our sources – they are atmospheric and also classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site. We walked along the old streets, up and down cobbled lanes, and explored the historic quarters. Obidan Street next to the former Jewish Quarter was particularly lively and popular, and walking past we noticed Medulla Vini, a tiny organic Wine Bar where everyone was just taking their glasses outside in the portico although there were no tables or seats outside. It was a very relaxed setting, and the Sangiovese Superior was just right for a balmy night.

No 3: Cimitero della Certosa (4 points)

The enormous Certosa Graveyard was only recommended in our printed guidebook. It was not far off the way from St. Luca (see below), so we made a detour and were amazed: not only by the size of the graveyard, but by the unusual architecture with large halls and courtyards, huge mausoleums, layered urn graves rising several metres from the ground (rather similar to the Roman-era tower tombs of Palmyra / Syria). Walking the graveyard felt like exploring a solemn old monastery, with new discoveries at every corner: Huge old memorials and mausoleum buildings, war memorials, a whole row of lavishly decorated children's graves …

No 4: The Porticoes of San Luca (3 points)

No 4 on the list is one of the "must-see" attractions that everyone recommends: After all it is usually not without reason that they are popular (and on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list). There must be very few Bologna tourists who don't walk the 4 km of porticoes leading to the church of San Luca – and rightly so, for the walkway for the yearly procession is picturesque and pleasantly shaded, it has a historic air and religious significance. As the church is situated on a hill, the walk includes quite many stairs but also affords nice views over the countryside, and sometimes there's a welcome breeze. And it is not only tourists who love the traffic-free arcades: Locals go running there, or for a walk with their dogs.

No 5: The Anatomical Theatre, the modern art exhibition “That's IT”, and ice cream at Vecchia Stalla (2 points each)

Finally, there was a mixed bunch of sights and activities that we also particularly enjoyed:

The Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio is another one of Bologna's tourist highlights. Built in 1637 as a lecture room for anatomy – then a rather new and daring subject, given the church's aversion to scrutinizing human bodies – the wooden auditorium is decorated with statues of famous scholars – and with two carved representations of men without skin, in order to show the location of their muscles.

We also visited the Modern Art Museum of Bologna (Mambo) and particularly liked the special exhibition "That's IT" – with IT standing for Italy, and contributions only from young Italian artists born after 1980 who presumably grew up with a more European than Italian identity. The attendants' sliver jackets were hilarious and we especially liked Margherita Moscardini's Atlantic Wall Project. 

And, of course, we found our favourite ice cream: The last day, we spotted the Cremeria la Vecchia Stalla not far from the church and monastery complex of San Stefano. An old-fashioned ice cream shop, they don't display their flavours in a glass vitrine but store them below metal lids – you have to guess at the Italian menu and select some that you can both pronounce and memorise until the crowd has swept you from the list of flavours to the cashier and on to the actual ice cream counter. We had Cioccolate extra fondente with Pistacchio Bronte, and Croccante Amarena combined with Divine, respectively, and we were very happy with it.

Have you been to Bologna and what were your favourite things to do? Leave a comment below!

***All expenses for our trip to Bologna were paid and organised by ourselves and we did not receive any funding from the above mentioned links.***

The old woodblock print matrixes at Haein-sa Temple in South Korea (UNESCO World Heritage)

The morning bus from Daegu is not particularly crowded, but on leaving the highway to tackle smaller roads into the mountains and towards UNESCO-designated Haein-sa Temple, it fills up. A number of old Korean peasants get on: They are wearing polyester dresses with floral patterns, and their shopping bags smell of fish and garlic. A huge radish tumbles out of one of the bags and rolls around the bus. The peasants, the bags, the fish and the vegetable – they all get off at another village, and after a short while we pass the Tripitaka Theme Park (hmmm – an amusement park built around Buddhist sutras?) and finally stop at a large but modern temple gate. A man gets on the bus to sell tickets to the passengers, or at least the tourists travelling on the bus, although it doesn't become altogether clear what they are for: For Haein-sa Temple? For the Gayasan National Park? Whatever, as everyone is buying one and at 3000 Won (about 2.30 €) they are not overly expensive, we pay up.

A few minutes later (and still further up in the mountains), the bus lets us off at the entrance to the temple precincts, from where a footpath leads to a modern museum building. And another 20 minutes' walk then brings us to the Haein-sa Temple itself.

The stump of a tree near the entrance gate is said to have been planted in 802, at the establishment of Haein-sa Temple. Most buildings and facilities in the front part of the temple are much newer reconstructions, however – we pass a number of accommodation facilities for pilgrims and lay visitors on a "temple-stay" programme also open to tourists, a larger gate housing the souvenir shop and a shop for devotional objects where visitors can also pay for prayers and other religious services.

Stairs then lead up to the main courtyard with the prayer hall and an old stone pagoda dating from the Unified Silla Period (668–935), when the temple was built. A few elderly women are walking anti-clockwise around the stone monument. The main hall behind is temporarily closed, with preparations under way for some religious celebration. No problem for us: it is a relatively new building – last refurbished in the 1970s – and the main reason for coming all this way is the plain wooden building further up the hill – the depository hall of the temple.

The depository hall, Janggyeong Panjeon, is indeed just an old storage room. Built in the 15^th century, it houses around 80,000 woodblocks which are even older: print matrixes for 80,000 pages of Buddhist texts, all very accurately executed in Chinese characters (back then, Chinese ideographs were the only writing used in Korea) without any known error. This enormous body of text, commonly called the Tripitaka Koreana, includes many more related texts, stories and commentaries than the standard Buddhist canon of Sutras (Tripitaka). They were carved in the 13^th century when Korea was faced with Mongol attacks, perhaps as a sort of spiritual defence measure against likely destruction. It is utterly astonishing that this huge old library has survived the ages intact.

To our disappointment, however, it is not possible for tourists to enter the storage rooms or even go near them – when we visited Haein-sa Temple on our Korea travels over 20 years ago, we remember, there was at least a small area open to visitors. We were so impressed back then that we have always wanted to come back. But alas, the only glimpse we can get of the woodblocks is from several meters away through an open, but latticed window.

When we pass the stone pagoda on our way back, another group of elderly women is debating the proper direction of the circumambulation – they end up walking clockwise around the pagoda. And in the museum down at the road, we can at least admire a replica of the woodblock storage shelves.

Is Haein-sa Temple worth visiting?

Yes, it is. Although you cannot see the old woodblocks close-up, it is a worthwhile daytrip out there. If you are interested in Korean Buddhism their overnight programs are in English and easy to arrange (Templestay Korea). The hilly surroundings are pleasant and the atmosphere with all the pilgrims is authentic.

How to get to the Haein-sa -Temple

Haein-sa is an easy day trip (or a longish half-day trip) from Daegu.

Daegu is a major city and transport hub in the centre of South Korea. From the Western Bus Station of Daegu (Seobu Intercity Bus Terminal, 서부 시외버스 터미널, reachable by metro) there are regular intercity buses to Haein-sa (about every 40 minutes) which take 1.5 hours. From the bus stop it's a pleasant 20 minute walk through the National Park, slightly uphill but on good broad paths. There are several cafés and small restaurants in and around the temple.

***All expenses for our trip were paid and organised by ourselves and we did not receive any funding or sponsoring.***

Eating out vegetarian at Con Tho in Berlin

On a beautiful mid-week day in May, we didn't think we would need a reservation for two people – but at 18.30 it was already difficult to get a seat on the pleasant terrace of the Vietnamese Restaurant Con Tho in Berlin, and half of the tables in the restaurant were also already occupied. The vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant seems to be quite popular, and rightly so, it turns out.

The setting is very nice, with both the terrace pleasant enough in spite of the busy road in front (but with a public park on the opposite side) and a stylish modern interior that somehow manages to be also warm and comfy.

We had a small bowl of "Rabbit's Favourite" to bridge the waiting time – two large slices of sweet potato with a garlic mayonnaise, which was amazingly good and intensified our anticipation. The main dish didn't take very long to arrive anyway.

For main dishes, we tried the "Happy Monk" vegetarian rice bowl with some seitan, marinated tofu, spinach and different vegetables on rice; and also one of their Banh Xeo (veggie rice flour pancakes). The "Afternoon Break" is a light pink pancake (the colour stems from beetroot) filled with vegetables and a lightly cooked egg. All the Banh Xeo variations are accompanied by summer rolls, or rather the ingredients for summer rolls: rice paper and lots of herbs and salad ingredients, as well as a spicy sour dip. The rice paper was already prepared and moistened and it was quite easy to stuff a roll. All the dishes we had had a distinct taste and were strong on individual herbs and spices rather than MSG.

To accompany the food, we had home-made lemonade, called "Red Lampion", which tasted intensely of cloves and mint (and perhaps of pandan, a herb that was also on the list of ingredients but that we couldn't identify). Hibiscus gave the drink a rich red colour.

We would have liked to try the desserts, but the mains were rather large servings – and also we had to vacate our table for the next guests. But we will come back for sure!

Con Tho Vegetarian Restaurant: Hasenheide 16, 10967 Berlin, Tel. 030 22456122. https://www.facebook.com/pg/ConThoBerlin

Read also the travel blog post about our visit to Chay Village, another vegan/ vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant in Berlin.

6 Highlights from 6 days in Kyoto

If you travel to Kyoto for the first time, by all means visit the must-sees! Places like Kinkakuji, Kiyomizu, Sanjusangendo or Fushimi Inari Shrine are spectacular and worth seeing even if everybody else is visiting them, too. And yes, it will be very crowded at Kyoto's top sightseeing highlights. But this post is about some off-the-beaten path highlights we discovered during 6 days we spent in Japan’s ancient capital Kyoto earlier this spring.

The Gardens at the Taizo-in Tempel

Several pleasant dry gardens with unusual round waves of gravel around stones and weeping cherry trees, yet more gardens with moss and stone lanterns, small ponds and a pagoda as backdrop – we were surprised to find such an enjoyable temple with so few visitors not far from Kyoto's main tourist attractions of Kinkaku-ji and Ryoan-ji. Taizo-in, a sub-temple of the not-so often visited Myoshin-ji in the Northwest of Kyoto, even offers dinner events with light-up in the garden during the cherry blossom season.

Matcha Parfait at Eirakuya

Between the tall modern buildings around the shopping district of Shijo-Kawaramachi, there is one old house with a sloping tiled roof. From the street it looks like many others, though; there is a shop inside selling traditional Kyoto sweets, pickles and salty miso paste. In the back, an unobtrusive sign announces a café on the second floor, and another sign mentions that the café is full – please register at the cash desk – but it is a moderate queue and it doesn't take us long to get a table. A surprise, since many of the touristy ice cream parlours around here are quite crowded, and this is a long-established cafe specialising in matcha and matcha sweets. Some of the Japanese guests have come wearing Kimonos, and not the cheap rental ones but proper high-class family heirlooms. We have a beautiful and tasty matcha latte, and the shop‘s speciality: a huge matcha parfait with lots of green tea ice-cream and green tea sauce, green tea jelly, plus shiratama (sticky rice balls), sweet bean paste, crunchy popped wheat and whipped cream.

Stone fellows at the Sekihôji Temple

When we passed the Fukakusa train station in the South of Kyoto, we remembered a temple we had visited many years ago during our first trip to Japan together (in 1991), and decided to revisit the Sekihôji Temple. It is a relatively minor Zen temple with the main hall only rebuilt in the 1980s after a fire. But it was here that the eccentric painter Ito Jakuchu lived in a simple hut in the 1790s, and he spent much of his time creating quite intriguing stone statues. The 500 Rakan, Buddhist holy men who are usually depicted highlighting their negative traits and imperfections (because nobody is perfect, but you can still try your best) are hidden in the forest behind the temple. A very atmospheric place.

A modern stone garden at Tôfukuji Tempel

Somewhat south-east of Kyoto station (and thus outside the central sightseeing areas), Tôfukuji is one of Kyoto's largest Zen temples, reasonably but not overly popular with tourists and especially famous for its autumn foliage. We are, however, particularly impressed by the spectacular gardens designed by Shigemori Mirei – the first important work by this innovative 20^th century garden artist, which made him famous. Anyone interested in Japanese gardens and/or modern Zen design should go and visit the Tôfukuji Abbot's Garden (Hôjô Teien 方丈庭園). In addition, Tôfukuji boasts some fascinating historical details, such as Japan’s oldest Zen bath house, and Japan’s oldest toilet facilities in a Zen temple.

Sake Tasting in Fushimi

Fushimi ward in the South of Kyoto is the regional centre for Sake brewing, thanks to its clear water. A number of Sake breweries in the area can be visited – we had a look at the Gekkeikan museum (Gekkeikan Ôkura Kinenkan) and sampled a craft beer at Kizakura Kinenkan (also originally a Sake brewery but now specialising more in craft beers). Finally, we went on to a Sake tasting at Fushimi Sake Village (Fushimi Sakagura Kouji). This pleasant bar in a yatai mura (a kind of traditional food court) also offers a full-scale Sake tasting with 17 small glasses of high quality Sake, each from a different regional brewery. And the food was good too.

Hidden doors at the Nijô Jinya

Nijô Jinya, hidden in a small alley not far from the much larger and touristy Nijô-jô Castle, used to be a VIP guesthouse during the Edo period (1600–1868). It can only be visited on a guided tour (in Japanese, although they do have an English leaflet for foreign travellers), but even at the start of the tourist season we could make a reservation for the next day. The house is a sprawling, rather luxurious villa, and the special features designed for yesteryear's luxury travellers don't seem so far away from today's needs: A comfortable interior with a built-in theatre stage (no cinema in those days); speedy food delivery facilities for room service; soundproof rooms for private talks; hidden chambers for the body guards; special emphasis on safety, fireproof materials, escape routes, safe storage for documents and valuables …

No pictures inside though – this is the only picture we have.

Extra: Coffee at Walden Woods

An inconspicuous white building behind Shosei-en Garden, without any sign or menu: Walden Woods is as minimalist as it gets; just a coffee counter and upstairs simple white steps to sit on. No decoration, no tables, no frills. The coffee was good, though.