03/02/2025 Walks

Woke up after another decent night's sleep. I wanted to get most of my steps in, sine it was going to be a long travel day. Headed out, misplaced my earbuds but found them right away, then walked around the local neighborhood. I saw most of the onsen baths nearby on the walk, had to be careful at times of icy streets but it wasn't particularly cold. I got back and warmed up for a while, had a light breakfast and then went down to the onsen in the ryokan and sat for a bit. It was very relaxing. I showered afterwards, and the hot water from the bath was just right for rinsing off. We left the ryokan a little after 9:00, got a pastry, and we're lucky enough to catch an earlier bus to Yudanaka station. This was a good thing because a long line formed behind us. We got on okay but picked the wrong car initially, so we didn't get to sit together, just across the aisle. Into Nagano, where we didn't have much time to buy tickets and get on the train. Ann bought the wrong tickets at the station, so we had to eat that cost and pay for the tickets on the train. It was about 4 hours on that train, not a lot of pretty scenery. I spent some of the time cleaning up Whatsapp images, and we ate a little bit too. Got to Nagoya station and had only 9 minutes to make our next train. The Suica cards didn't work, but Ann was able to work it out with the ticket agent, who gave us paper tickets to use before the Suica cards. Voila! Thankfully, we didn't have far to walk to the platform where our Shinkansen train was just pulling in. We got on okay, but it was a tense 10 minutes. The train ride to Kyoto was fast, up to 175 mph, and we got to the local office for our Airbnb with only a minimum of direction challenges. Waited there about 20 minutes, then got a shuttle to the Airbnb, which is like an extended stay hotel room, quite modern. We relaxed after the long traveling day, then walked to a nearby Fresco small supermarket to get some food for dinner and snacks. Dinner was fine, evening was quiet.