Wednesday - Cloudy, warm and rainy
Well, I had a lovely time away. I got to the station in good time for my train and even managed to buy a couple of things to eat on the train for breakfast.
When I got to Niigata I was really surprised by the station. They’ve been renovating it for years and they are still doing it. However, it is now completely different from the way that it was the last time I was there. I kept getting lost! I was supposed to meet my friend and I didn’t see her at all. Happily, she phoned me and we figured it out. She had brought one of her sons with her and it was nice to see him again. With the pandemic it was really hard for her to travel here so I haven’t seen her in years.
I took them on a long walk over to Capricciosa, an Italian restaurant. We had a lovely lunch there and then when we were finished, waddled back to LoveLa and she went to get her eyes tested. She did that, I took her son off for a brief tour of the shops. He was looking for a gift for a friend. We went back to the glasses shop and then tried to help her find a pair of glasses that she liked! Let’s just say that my friend took forever to make up her mind and her son and I were telling her that they all looked good by the end! We were over it. However, I had a cool thing happen. My friend from the next city saw me and we had a little chat for a few minutes. I had no idea that she was even in Niigata, let alone that we would see each other!
After my friend finally picked out her glasses, she took care of the business things and then I took them to a nice coffee shop nearby. We had some nice drinks, some had food, and lots of conversation. Next up, we walked back to the station and then through it. They wanted to go to a bookstore. I wanted to check out their English books too, so we were all happy. They went off for Japanese books, and I looked at the English ones. I was a little sad to see that there just weren’t many English books anymore. It used to be a great shop for English books.
After the bookstore, we went back to the station and they looked for their train back to my friend’s parent’s home. There was one in a bit, and they wanted to do some more shopping so I left them at that point, with many hugs.
I walked over to my hotel and checked in. I went up to my room. It was small, plain, but comfortable. I relaxed for a couple of hours. I’d walked almost 10,000 steps at that point and my feet and legs hurt!
I went out a bit later to grab dinner. I had thought of eating out, but there wasn’t anywhere close to the hotel that I would feel comfortable eating by myself, so I went to 7-11 and bought something for dinner! I went back to the room and ate dinner.
I talked to F later on but was in bed by 2 am I think. I was so tired!
This morning I woke up around 8 am and got up a bit later. I went downstairs to have breakfast and it was fine. It’s a free breakfast and they had a reasonable selection of food. I had some eggs, chicken and broccoli, salad, yogurt and granola. I skipped the more Japanese foods but enjoyed breakfast anyway.
I went back up to my room and finished packing up. I took a shower as well and then checked out at 11 am. I left my bags at the hotel and then went off on my way.
I went into the station and checked where I had to go to catch my train. I found the gate and then I went and made a slight change to my tickets. I upgraded my seat. I wanted to be a little more comfortable on the train than I was on the way to Niigata so I got tickets for the Green Car.
I then made my merry way back to LoveLa 2. I went to the coffee shop and had a sandwich and an iced decaf coffee with milk. It was very nice.
From there, I did a lot of walking around and some window shopping. I explored some of the shops in the buildings and basically just tried to see as much as I could.
I had a proper lunch a bit later. I went to a Farm Restaurant that I like a lot and had grilled pork for lunch. My lunch was delicious and quite reasonable. After that, I made a slow return to the hotel.
Around 5 I asked for my bag back and then went over to the station. I was really tired again today and my legs hurt a lot. I did more than 5 times the usual amount of walking I do in a day over the two days I was in Niigata!
I went through the ticket gate at the station and then spent a few minutes in the waiting room. From there I went upstairs and waited on the platform after I bought some water for the train.
The ride back to Tsuruoka was very pleasant. The seat was extremely comfortable and the car was quiet. Some young people were sitting up front and I was a little surprised that they had Green Car seats, but why not?
F met me at the station and we went to Gusto for a quick dinner. I had chicken and fries, he had fried oysters and a few of my fries.
After dinner, we did some grocery shopping. Guess I’m back to the old grind again. Sigh. I’m going to make dinner for the next two nights.
We came back to the house and I did the downstairs garbage. F did the upstairs garbage, which was very nice of him. He took it out to the gomi station too.
And that’s about it. I’ve spent the last couple of hours blogging and doing computer stuff, trying to catch up. My legs hurt a lot, and my knees are quite annoyed with me, but that’s usual after one of these trips. I think I need to keep walking like I used to, but unfortunately, I have nowhere that I can do the DVDs in the house. I may need to physically get out of the house. Noooo!
Anyway, I hope this wasn’t too boring to read. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….
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