We next docked in Kobe, also on the island of Honshu. My husband went on an excursion that took him to Kyoto where he visited the Sanjusangendo Temple, a Buddhist temple. Originally built in 1164, it is famous for its 1,001 statues of Kannon, the goddess of compassion. The Temple is almost 400 feet long, the longest wooden structure in the world, and the Kannon statues line its entire length. The Temple burned down in 1249 but the main hall…
We were next going to Hiroshima. We took a ferry from Miyajima to the island of Honshu where Hiroshima is located. Along the way we saw the Hiroshima Castle (first picture below). It was built in the center of the city rather than on a hilltop. It became the economic and geographic center of Hiroshima. It was destroyed by the atomic bomb in 1945, but the main keep, the central tower of the castle, has since been rebuilt. Our group…
From Uwajima, we next sailed to Miyajima, an island in Hiroshima Bay. We anchored off the island and took a tender to Miyajima. Miyajima is well known for its “floating torii,” a popular tourist attraction. At high tide it appears to be floating, but at low tide visitors can walk on the sea floor right up to the torii. In addition to seeing the floating torii, we also visited the Itsukushima Shinto Shrine. We walked on this path which led…
After our night tour of Seoul, we went on another independent tour with Tours By Locals. This time we would be in Suwon area, about 20 miles south of Seoul. We would first visit the Hwaseong Fortress, a stone and brick fortress built in the late 1700s. It was badly damaged during the Korean War. A document, Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe (Records of Hwaseong Fortress Construction), was published in 1801 and was used to reconstruct much of the Fortress. It is…
We took Tauck’s “Sakura Seas: South Korea and Japan” tour. The first part of our tour was centered in Seoul. We came a few days early to see some sites on our own before the start of the tour. Before arriving in Korea, we booked a private night tour of Seoul (through Get Your Guide). Our first stop was the Changyeonggung Palace, a palace we had visited on our prior trip in 2009. It was the third palace built during…
From Bern, we went to Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps. It was this opportunity that attracted us to this particular tour. This area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. We first took a bus to Lauterbrunnen where we would catch one of two trains to Jungfraujoch. These are some of the beautiful views we saw near the Lauterbrunnen train station. We were appreciative of these photo opportunities because we knew we would encounter a snowstorm at higher…
We began our Rhine, Swiss Alps and Amsterdam Tauck tour in Bern, Switzerland. We arrived a day early and stayed in a very nice room in the Bellevue Palace. These are views from our hotel room. The first picture below is the Albert Einstein Museum. It was within walking distance of our hotel and dealt mostly with Einstein’s life and to a lesser extent some of his inventions. The second picture is the Aare River. It flows through Bern and…
After our time in Paris, our riverboat set sail for our first port of call, Poissy. From there we took a bus to the Palace of Versailles. Both the Palace and the Gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Walking to the Palace entrance, we were struck by the beauty of the gates and fencing surrounding the Palace. The gilded gates were originally built to impress guests and emphasize the grandeur of the monarchy. The gold leaf was a sign…
We left Scottsdale and began driving to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. On the way, we made a lunch stop in Sedona, Arizona. Sedona is famous for its red rocks. I found this explanation of how these beautiful formations came to be. Before the red rock was turned into rock, it was all soft mud and sand. Over a 320 million year period changes in nature helped transform the sand and mud into something more beautiful than we…
We spent most of our time in Budapest on the Pest side but took a taxi to the Buda side to see Matthias Church and the Fisherman’s Bastion. Matthias Church, officially known as the Church of Our Lady or the Church of the Assumption of the Buda Castle, is a Roman Catholic church located in the Holy Trinity Square in front of the Fisherman’s Bastion. The church was originally built in 1255. It has been called Matthias Church (referring to…