I slept all the way until 6:45 today! The ryokan beds are extremely comfy and spacious too -- we basically get a full size bed to each of us. The kids sleep in the living room on tatami mats they set up every night, Baba and I have a bedroom with raised beds, and the dining room is partitioned off so all the food smells don't permeate over. And the entire area is just so peaceful. No garbage trucks, hotel guests in hallways, just rain drops on trees as background noise. Today, the forecast is calling for rain in the afternoon after 3pm...so our plan is to hit all of the highlights before then and then soak in the tub and relax until dinnertime.
What are the highlights you ask? First up, we go skiing!
Obviously just kidding. But it is gondola time! Taking the chair way up over the mountains to get to the lake. The ropeway is very high up...there was some definite swinging from the gusts of wind as we passed through some sections. I can definitely understand why they shut it down sometimes!
Check out the view of the sulfuric springs below. This is where they cook eggs directly in the water ending up with black colored shells. Folklore says that you extend your lifespan by 7 years if you eat one! I was super pumped by the idea...but we also wanted to do as much as we could before it rained...so we decided to save the egg stop for the trip back and continued on to the next chair way without stopping this morning.
We did catch a bunch of views of Mt. Fuji from the next leg though! Seems like an appropriate checklist item for a first trip to Japan. The cloudiness makes it very hard to see...the snow capped peaks kind of blend in with the clouds. It was much more obvious in person -- the human eye is clearly better than the Pixel camera still!
Closer up shot -- see the snow under the clouds there?
After a couple more gondola legs, we arrived at the next transportation method: pirate ship!
The boat ride wasn't anything much to speak of, but nice as a change of pace. The views of Lake Ashi and surrounding valleys was nice, but again not anything I would make a special trip for. The true destination point on this loop was a lovely 10 min walk through the forest...
Ta-da! Cover photo for the trip! The famous Hakone peace torii photo spot. We had to stand in line for a good 45 minutes but I think the photo was worth it!
The twins had plenty of time to plan their multiple poses...here's the classic heart!
After we finished with that...it was hitting noon. While I wanted to do the reverse loop back for those black eggs, our actual last destination was the Open Air museum, which was only a 18 min bus ride from the cruise port where we were. So...I resigned myself to missing out on those life extending eggs. Onto the crowded Japanese bus experience!
The Hakone Open-Air Museum was a huge hit. So many interesting things to see. Here's the stained glass rainbow staircase (I felt super trained up for this one with my daily stairmaster walks at work!).
The picturesque foot bath.
Highlight for the twins: climbing net playground -- only open for ages 12 and under. They loved this so much that they sent Ian and I onto the Picasso exhibit on our own while they played around for another half hour. Good reminder that 11 year olds, while they sometimes look and seem super grown up, still count as children for good reason. Can you find R in this net?
There were other structures meant for climbing/playing in too. Here's the cool rainbow frames:
I didn't get a photo of it, but there was also a maze structure. It was actually decently hard to find your way around! A little Triwizard maze feel! The other thing I liked about the park was the number of cherry blossoms blooming throughout. Hakone was closer to full bloom time than Tokyo, we got a lot of photos of the flowers in!
Here's a particularly full one in a random alley on our walk back to the ryokan. Truly just everywhere!
We successfully managed to avoid most of the rain. Made it back to Gora station for the ryokan shuttle with enough time for a quick snack break!
I decided to forego the public onsen today and instead did my pre dinner soak at our private open-air onsen in the suite. Wish we had one of these at home!
Dinner tonight was just as elaborate as yesterday, biggest difference was a wagyu shabu course instead of yesterday's "hydrogen grill wagyu" course.
The sashimi course had some interesting entries today...I didn't care for it as much as yesterday's, but the clams were not bad.
Last shot of dusk from the living room patio -- the rain was actually coming down pretty hard now. Glad we were warm and toasty inside!
Tomorrow we return back to Tokyo for the last segment of the trip. 😢
Great job on the posts! Have read them all. Looks like an amazing vacay…
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