Seoul to Kyoto, Day 7 - Goodbye, Seoul. Hello, Kyoto.

I heart you, Seoul (lover's locks at the Seoul Tower).

I'm not going to tell you that Seoul is the most magical city in the world and that you must drop everything and go there. However, if food plays a large part in choosing your next destination, I think Seoul makes a decent argument to move near the top of your travel list. Like I said in an earlier post, Seoul gives Paris a run for its money in the cuisine department. But it's a lot cheaper.

If you love truly great cuisine at a truly affordable price, Seoul fits the bill. It's also an enormous city with a million things to do and places to see. The public transportation is top notch. I love how everything in Seoul goes up. Stores and restaurants are often located on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors, so you're constantly looking all around you instead of just straight ahead. It was a refreshing change of perspective. All in all, there's nothing bad I can say about Seoul.

After an emotional goodbye to our host (she's my best friend and I never know how many years will pass before I see her again), we took the shuttle back to the airport and flew on Asiana Airlines to Osaka. They served us salmon salad sandwiches. You know you're not in the U.S. when you get a salmon salad sandwich on an airplane.

We bought these goodies for the flight.

From the Kansai International Airport, we took the JR Express Haruka straight to Kyoto. I think it cost about 4000 Y per ticket, but it didn't make any stops and only took 70 minutes. From the Kyoto train station, we took a cab to Tanaka-Ya, the guest house that would be our home for the next few days.

Tanaka-Ya was located in Migawacho, only a few blocks away from Gion, the major geisha district. We were about a ten minute walk from the subway, which ended up coming in handy many times. Our room was a traditional Japanese bedroom with mats on the floors.

It was extremely quiet and comfortable in at Tanaka-ya. There are four guest rooms and two bathrooms upstairs. The shared shower was downstairs, and we never had to wait too long to get in. The woman who runs the place was very kind, and I would highly recommend staying here based on comfort, location, and the unique experience in staying in a traditional Japanese home.

We walked around Gion, searching for a place to eat. We were tired and settled on the cheapest place we could find, which happened to be sushi. I think after the long day we mostly just wanted the hot sake. For some reason, I thought sushi would be cheap in Japan, but it is still a luxury item, just like in the rest of the world.

Our plates of sushi were 1000 Y each.

We left the restaurant, still exhausted, and happily crashed on our mat at Tanaka-ya.

* When we visited Japan in April 2012, 1000 Yen equaled about $12.