Typhoon Day

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Woke very early this morning. We have a train to catch to Hiroshima and wanted to get away early. Alarm was set for 6:00 but we were both up before the alarm went off to finish packing bags before heading down to breakfast.

We chose the Japanese breakfast this morning. It was a beautiful selection of tasty morsels of fish, rice, chicken, miso soup and some fruit to finish with. Portions were sensible and it was an excellent start to the day.

Because we were up so early we were able to transfer to an earlier train once we were at the station. Again, our timing with catching trains and busses has been amazing. We arrived at the station around 7:45, swapped our tickets, and were pulling out of the station at 8:00 bound for Hiroshima.

The bullet trains are amazing. All things considered, it's such a smooth ride and you really feel the power as they take off and I've always preferred train travel over flying as you can see more around you as your travel.

Arrive at Hiroshima and, after a chat in the information centre, went to drop our bags at the bag drop so we could get on with the day more quickly. Found out that they had a hotel delivery service as well as a bag drop which worked perfectly for us.

Caught a local train to Miyajima and a ferry across to the island and spent about 4 hours wandering around looking at the village and a number of the shrines etc on the island. A very interesting place.

We returned to Hiroshima and went to the castle and then the A-Bomb Dome, which is where the first atomic bomb was dropped. These ruins were basically the only remnants of the city after the bomb as everything else was flattened for miles. It rained while we were there but only gently. We had heard that there was a typhoon predicted somewhere in Japan but this was clearly not the place.

It was while photographing the dome that Brett's camera stopped working!

We went up to a lookout tower for a panoramic view of the area and watched the sun go down and the city lights start to go on. Very relaxing after what had been a long day.

Our final stretch was to wander through Peace Park before heading to the hotel.

We stopped for a quick bite to eat and then across the road to the hotel.

Both of us were very tired so we turned in early.



Random thought for the day: toilets on the bullet train are much bigger than on a plane!

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