May 5, 2019

Sunday - Hot and sunny

Well, as usual when F and I take holidays, we spend the days before the vacay fighting and then have a fabulous time on the holiday. 

Briefly, because it is very late now….We left on Friday for Niigata. We drove down and made pretty good time. We went via the coast which was beautiful. We checked into our hotel a bit after 3 and surprise, surprise, were able to park in their carpark. Yay.

We had a quiet evening, we took ourselves off to the bookstore and had a great ol’time in the shop. I got a couple of new books and some postcards and greeting cards too. F didn’t get anything this time. He did see a place to eat though, so we went for coffee and discussed what to do. Neither of us had worn jackets and the sun was going down. We decided to just go for dinner and then walk back to the hotel as best we could.  

The place that F wanted was fully booked, but the place next to it wasn’t. We had a really nice meal there, with lots of different types of food. We came back to the hotel via the import food store in the station. 

At the room, we watched/listened to a bit of music from the free pay per view and had an early night.

On Saturday, we got up around 8 and took showers.  We had breakfast near the station and then caught the loop city bus.  We spent most of the morning and afternoon touring Niigata.  We went to the Pia Bandai, which is a bit like the fish market plus a bunch of other stores too. F loved that, and we had some sushi there. Yum.

The next place we visited was my favourite place on the tour, the Saito Summer Family Residence. It’s a big old house with an amazing garden. Happily, F liked it as much as I did. We stopped and had some matcha (him) or iced coffee (me) there while we were observing the garden. 

Next up, we visited the Ozawa Residence. It was good, but it was my second time and I didn’t enjoy it as much.  F seemed to like it. We did a little walking around the area before we caught our next bus though.

Last on our tour was the Bandaijima Art Museum. They had a photography exhibit of works by Saul Leiter. It was really good. Both of us enjoyed it.

After that, we were both a bit tired and peckish, so we had ice cream at the observation tower. We did have to leave in a bit of a rush as we needed to catch the last bus back to the station.  We did!

We rested in our room and I asked F to call the Mexican Restaurant that I like to see if we could get in.  He did and they said we could come. Yay.  We walked over and had a lovely meal. I drank hibiscus tea and we had some amazing food.  F had tacos with shrimp and avocado, we shared an order of ajillo with shrimp on Mexican rice and then I had chicken with mole sauce. That was amazing. I’ve never had that before.  I had rice pudding for dessert, which I shared a bit with F. We got the last table, so it was a good thing that we reserved the table!

We waddled back to the hotel via the Don Quihote. F got a few things there, I got one or two things too.  

At the hotel, we watched a video on demand called Wonderstruck.  We both really enjoyed it. It was a Todd Haynes film and he’s not known for “enjoyable” films, but this one was.

Today was a little different too.  We slept in and then went out to Doutor for breakfast.  We checked out of our hotel at 11 and then drove to the big Musashi near the mall.  We did a little shopping in the craft centre and then had lunch in the lovely Italian restaurant that I love, Cento Percento.  F was a bit of a jerk about it though. I thought it was reasonable, but as F said, it wasn’t ramen, soba or udon. (Thank goodness said I.)

We went over to the mall then and hacked around a bit. I got some new clothes, a light workout jacket and a pair of culottes in a wild print.  We had a drink and a doughnut and then headed out of the city.

We stopped in a roadside rest area and took an onsen bath. F enjoyed it more than I did, but I did enjoy it. The water wasn’t boiling like they usually have it.  After our bath, we stopped at the nearby restaurant for dinner.  I had fish and F had tempura.

We drove back to the house. K was in bed when we arrived and we only heard her a few minutes ago.  

I’m not sure what we’ll get up to on Monday. It’s F’s last day off and I hope he’ll want to do something fun!  

Come back later if you will and see what we get up to. Until tomorrow….