Today we had our appointment for touring the Imperial Palace here in Kyoto so we got around about 10 to go walk the Philosopher’s Path in the morning beforehand. We took the subway to the closest stop and walked over to where the path starts and grabbed breakfast from a bakery along the way. The Philosopher’s path is named for a Kyoto university professor of philosophy who would walk along this canal every morning. It is a beautiful winding path along a slow moving canal lined with cherry trees and other flowers. As we got to the beginning it had started to sprinkle and Becky luckily had remembered her umbrella. I had my poncho but didn’t want to use it for this light sprinkle as I would sweat enough to offset any rain that missed me. We got to the end of the path which then leads up to the Ginkaku-ju or “silver” temple and by this time it was raining a little more so I bought an umbrella from a small shop along the path. The Gikaku-ju temple was named the silver temple as it was intended to be covered in silver plate like the “golden” temple we will visit tomorrow is covered in gold but it never got completed. It is still set in a beautiful garden which we wandered through looking at all the sights and the wonderful view of Kyoto from the hillside. By this time is was about noon and our appointment was a good walk away (further than I originally estimated) so we headed out in that direction. It had kept raining steadily throughout the walk and the temperature was hovering in the 40s I think so it made for a pretty miserable walk. We got to the Palace grounds which is basically a big park and we walked through to locate where we were to be for the tour. Once we got our bearings we had about 45 minutes for lunch so we went to the first place we saw and grabbed a bite. I am not sure what type of food it was supposed to be (kind of Japanese-French I think) but it was tasty and convenient (right across the street from the tour start). We then went to figure out the tour and basically followed the other western looking tourists until we got to a gate into the palace grounds proper where they checked our papers and let us through. We caught the tour just as they were coming out of the waiting area to start and got to go through the palace itself (not inside just kind of got to look in on a few exterior areas). We went through the ceremonial parts first – receiving rooms, throne rooms, etc, then went through the residential parts which were more interesting as there were 2 beautiful gardens made for the emperors use that were just stunning to look at. The tour was good and bad, the good was seeing those gardens and learning a little of the history of the palace, the bad was everyone had umbrellas and there were about 40 people so it was tough to see certain parts and certainly hard to get decent pictures and Becky was cold and miserable and not up to fighting crowds by this time. It was also all on this loose gravel walkways so as people shifted around to see better or take pictures it was tough a lot of times to hear the tour guide. By the end of the tour we were both ready for a rest so instead of seeing more we walked through the rest of the grounds on our way to the subway and back to the hotel for a nap. After our nap we were both refreshed and more importantly warm so I went to the JR station area where there are 2 huge malls to see about getting some food. After looking at all the options (one mall has 2 whole floors of food options and the other 2 long halls of restaurants) I decided on a couple of steamed buns stuffed with a pork filling (fantastic), a bento box of sorts filled with pork and chicken katsu (a type of breading and frying meats), rice and salad. I also got us a strawberry tart for dessert. When I got back Becky had braved the public bath we have in the hotel (you will have to read her take on her blog) and was warm, well rested and ready for supper. We ate and I decided to follow her lead and try out the bath. Japanese baths are interesting the way they basically work, at least here in our hotel, is that you go to a locker room and disrobe then go into the bath area where there are shower heads and stools lining all of the walls. You then proceed to completely clean yourself from head to toe before getting in the bath, the Japanese would never bathe dirty. When I got there it was empty so I went through all the steps and started to soak. It’s basically like a really big hot tub, probably 10’x20′, and you just get to lie back and relax. I thought it would be wierd when others came in but 2 Japanese men came in shortly after and we just all ignored each other pretty much and before they finished washing up I was well pruned and so I got out and headed back to the room to relax and write this up. The experience of the bath was a good one and I think if I have time I will likely do it again tomorrow evening as it is very relaxing and nice on sore muscles from all the walking we have been doing. Our last day in Kyoto is tomorrow and we have a couple of things we hope to see before moving on Sunday.