Geisha spotting in Kyoto

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We took the overnight bus from tokyo to kyoto and arrived at 6am to a very closed looking city. One cafe was open so we sat and had breakfast and waited til a decent time to walk to our hostel. We had marked on our map where the hostel was unfortunately it had moved and the owner hadn't updated the information, eventually we tracked the place down and dumped our bags before heading to the textile museum to see weaving of kimono silk and a kimono fashion show. one of the weavers, a very small old man, kindly showed us the ins and outs of the loom speaking only in japanese, we got the main idea but mostly we were just nodding along politely unable to understand. We walked down through the imperial palace gardens, which were beautiful, wishing we had brought a picnic and made our way to a little shopping area where they had loads of things made from kimono silk, all of the souvenirs you can buy here are so nice it was hard for me to stop myself from spending all our money!! I did manage though and only bought a couple of little things. Later in the afternoon we walked across the river to the Gion district where the Geisha mostly hang out. the area itself is really nice with lots of little shops and restaurants and bars down various alleys, we wandered around for a while and then spotted a Geisha walking down the cobbled street near the Asaka shrine. I quickly got my camera out and managed to get a wee sneaky photo, imagine our disappointment when we walked past her and realised she was a western tourist in dress up for a photo, you can pay to do this in kyoto at many of the guest houses. However later we did spot three real geisha and they looked really impressive, the outfit is so complicated and beautiful and the make up must take ages to put on and get off. They quickly disappeared into a teahouse. In the evening we walked along the old canal a little where there are traditional buildings and bridges and lots of cherry blossom so it was very pretty.
On our second day we started our day with a breakfast picnic in the palace gardens and then walked up to the Golden Temple, having seen so many same same temples we were pleasantly surprised when this one was unlike any we had already seen, it is literally covered in gold! the grounds were gorgeous and after walking around in the sun all morning we decided it was time for an ice cream, I just had chocolate but paul picked pink thinking maybe it was strawberry but was happy to find out it was cherry blossom flavour. he liked it and it did taste nice but was bit strange, one other option was green tea ice cream which we have already tried and didn't like but we had little giggle when we overheard an american complaining as he thought he was getting pistachio!
We then went to the manga museum only to find that its closed on wednesdays, unlucky, we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around kyoto before heading back to the hostel to eat some food and get our bags before catching the overnight bus back to tokyo where we are now waiting for anything to open besides a 24 hour internet cafe!!

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