Surprising Espen - or rather Finding Espen??

Jøran & my colleague and friend, Espen, arrived in Osaka yesterday in order to join us for a meeting in Tokyo in the beginning of next week. He planned to stay in Kyoto until friday and then come to Nagoya and go on to Tokyo.

For some reason, Jøran and I felt that we really could need a day off - and what would be better than to just catch an early train to Kyoto and go and surprise Espen on his first morning?? So we took a Shinkansen at 7:15, arrived in Kyoto just arround 8 and headed for Espens hotel. For some reason though, they were not able to find him there and sent us off to another hotel. There they were not able to find him either though, so we went back to the first hotel (which we were pretty sure he was staying at), asked again without any luck, and decided to just sit in the Lobby and wait. At 9:30 however we were about to give up and head for sightseeing in gorgeous, sunny weather. I made one last attemt (rather determined and quite sure that I would not leave until they found him), which FINALLY lead to them finding him - after searching databases and passport copies for around 15 minutes. Luckily, Espen was a little tired from the long flight and had not left yet - so I called him on his room asking how he was and what his plans for the day were. He had no clue Jøran and I were sitting in the Lobby - and you should really have seen the expression on his face when he came down... :D


So we started for a day of Kyoto-sightseeing in really nice weather (for more info on all the temples we went to look at the blogg from my first trip to Kyoto) , staring at the Kiyomizudera temple, which I visited in terrible weather before. Espen managed to walk from one of the Love stones to the other without any problem - congratulations!!!

From the pure water temple we walked to the Kodaiji temple. It was really nice and hot, and much more fun to do the sightseeing with great company!

No Yvonne-special one-day Kyoto trip is perfect unless you have visited Ginkakuji temple... So, after a nice soft-ice lunch we caught a bus and off we went.

And since the weather was nice and it still was not too late we decided to see Kinkakuji temple as well. Effective sightseeing...

After Kinkakuji we took a bus to the old town and had a very nice dinner at an indian restaurant, before we wandered the streets of the old town. At around 9 Jøran and I caught a Shinkansen back to Nagoya. Mission accomplished - subject surprised :p