Blogging mom

Our last day in Kyoto started with a serene walk on my own through the quiet streets and up through kiyomizudera temple. I got myself a real coffee and wandered around while the rest of the family was still asleep. At around 8:30 the hoards of school kids started to arrive and the serenity was about to finish. One boy stopped to say hello and ask me where I was from. He then ran off screaming to his friends "I spoke to a foreigner!" Quite hilarious.  

We are now relaxing before dinner after a great day on bikes. The machiya (guesthouse/townhouse) that we are staying in has turned out to be great and just what we needed. The kids have space, we have space and the location is awesome. I was able to find little pancakes and waffles and fruit at the convenience store and had a breakfast prepared for when everyone woke up. Voila! A bit of a taste of home.  Except it was me making it and not Abby which is usually the way things are done in Toronto!

The kids definitely require kid things and breaks in between temples and history lessons.  Fair enough. I think they have a one historical site per day limit. Maybe two if the visits are short. They enjoy them while we are there but then want to explore or play frisbee or read their kindles. It's nice to have the time built into the schedule so we can take our time and not feel we need to see everything at once. 

I'm also finding that I am way more tired than I had expected to be. I wear a Fitbit so I know how many steps I do. At home I can polish off a good long walk on a Saturday morning with Jen and over the course of a day rack up 25k steps. Here I'm between 15-20k a day but feel much more tired. Craig thinks it's all the stimuli and perhaps it's because the pace is slow but I'm pretty much standing most of the day?

With that said I'm off for a nap :)