Advertisement
From The Plane
Yes....The plane had wings! This really starts on 17th May with a 6am pickup from home by our friends Dorothea & Yvonne who kindly drove us to Manchester airport to start our holiday.
We checked in with Air France and got our tickets to Paris and from Paris to Osaka, but the seat allocation we had been given differed from those we had originally booked. We were told by the Air France desk that agents are not allowed to reserve seats, but we had been given seats across the aisle from each other. She was able to change this so that we got front row seats with loads of leg room, but we were in the middle aisle and Al really wanted a window seat, (I wasn't to bothered by that).
Still we are off on holiday and feeling good. The flight to Paris was good, off on time and landed early. Spent a couple of hours in Charles de Gaulle airport and then boarded our flight to Osaka. Once everyone had checked in we noticed that the seats we had been told had been reserved for us were unoccupied!!!!. Still we sat in our new allocation until landing at which point
Some Fans
Schoolkids - Japanese Style Al decided he wanted to move to watch as the plane came in. The flight lasted 10 hours, it took off 20 minutes but landed 40 minutes early. The flight itself appeared to be never ending. Everytime I looked we still had hours to go. Our route took us from Paris, over Germany, the Baltics, Russia, China, South Korea and into Japan.
First thing we did was collect our Japan Rail tickets and go for the Train to Osaka City. The Train was in when we arrived but needed cleaning. Each carriage had its own cleaner who dusted, vaccumed, wiped every surface before we were allowed on. As expected the train lefy exactly on time.
We changed onto the subway, and after a few minutes we where in Shinsaibashi and walking to the Hotel- Dormy Inn Shinsaibashi. Check in was 3pm so we dumped the bags and decided to start our holiday. We are only in Osaka for this evening and tomorrow morning so time was short in Osaka.
We set off for probably the most defining attraction of Osaka which is it castle. Unfortunately this is a reconstructed castle but was still impressive non-the-less. We noticed
Osaka Castle
First view of Osaka Castle that we attracted a lot of attention, especially from school childred who were obessed about coming up and speaking english, it was rather strange at first, but you kind of get used to it.
After an hour at the Castle and museum we headed off for lunch, and then back to Hotel to check in. The room is rather small, just about room from the bed and desk, but it is comfy and clean. We were both tired, last time we had slept in a bed was Tuesday night, we set the alarm for 6pm and had a snooze. We woke up at 8pm. Damn alaram clock.
We explored Osaka by night, and it was another world. Neon, Karaoke bars, shops were all bustling and we headed to Dotomori, the night district which was only 5 minutes from the hotel. We had pork and Miso noodles for dinner and whilst they were very nice, they gave way too much. Then we had look around some electrical shops until the heaviest thunderstorm I have ever seen erupted and we headed back to the hotel.
Its now 11:30pm and its time for bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.109s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0726s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
yvonne
non-member comment
need a holiday
Hi there what a great start, I've just got back home at 10pm on friday night, just finished work looking forward to reading your blog. Looks great, "beam me across scotty". Pics of the place look good. Now look after ourselvies and don't stay up to late now!!!! love yvonne