Kyoto's Zen Temples

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Having gotten in late the night before, we slept in and relaxed for our first morning in Kyoto. I had started feeling a bit queasy (and felt that way for the next four days or so which was too bad, but we worked around it ok. You can see in some the pictures I look kinda unenthused, even though it was a great trip!). Anyways, embarrassingly we had lunch at Macdonalds because it was the only place I could find with salad, and that was all I could stomach (Steve had a teriyaki burger, not too bad actually), and then made use of our free tickets courtesy of our hotel to go up the Kyoto Tower. It was a nice view, but not hugely exciting.
We decided to visit some Zen temples that were tucked away on the northwestern end of Kyoto, and left the temple dense parts of Kyoto for another day. First we went to the Daitoku-ji Temple complex. It is a group of 24 subtemples all linked by walkways. We visited one of the subtemples which has beautiful rock gardens. You must take off your shoes to visit, so you are walking around in your bare feet on the softest wood imaginable and it is so quiet and peaceful. Everything is placed just so, it just has a sense of tranquility about it. I really liked it.
We also went to the Ryoan-ji Temple. Also a Zen temple, it had lots of walking trails and forest around it, with a large pond in front. At night we walked around the downtown shopping area - bright lights and big department stores.

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