New exploration by bicycle today, definitely essential. What gain of independence …! This would not have been very convenient for me the first times, but now that I begin to know well the city, that’s great!
So I continued my discovery of the old Kyoto today … and more pure wonders and lovely encounters …
First, the visit of a tiny Zen temple, which was unknown to me until then, intimate and secret, very hard to find … And then I question a young monk, we begin to discuss .. . and suddenly, it tells me that there is another garden in the enclosure, a roji, which is not normally open to the public, but he is ready to show me for a while. So there, my friends, if this is not a gift from the universe, I do not know what it is …!
Then, lunch in a kaiseki restaurant, the typical cuisine of Kyoto, an ancient and sublime machiya… with tsuboniwa … sincerely, there are no words … I still have breath taken away and heart upside down !
I continue with the visit of another machiya, to discover the indigo work of a craftsman.
I end the day in a tea room, with my favorite dessert – ice matcha to the azuki beans mashed – in front of another tsuboniwa, more modern but equally charming …!
Ah, what day… ! See you tomorrow for the rest…