Hello!
Robert here. Margaret
is not in the mood to blog right now; actually, I believe she is unconscious at
the moment. See below.
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| At Chinese restaurant |
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| Our starter of peanuts and ?? |
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| Our dim sum |
It is Monday night, 22 January and we just finished dinner
here at the hotel. There are three
choices for dining: The Japanese buffet (where we had lunch), the Japanese
restaurant and the Shunten Chinese
restaurant. Since we had eaten at the
buffet, we decided to go with one of the restaurants. After perusing the menus, we opted for
Chinese, and that was a great choice.
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| Sweet and sour pork |
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| Beef and garlic |
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| Fried noodles |
Here is what we had: To open, we had chili pepper segments,
fried crisp and served with peanuts. Starters:
Dim Sum - Shrimp and pork spring rolls; shrimp and vegetable pockets; pork,
shrimp and vegetable dumplings. Main Course:
Wok beef with garlic and vegetables; Sweet and sour pork; Fried noodles with
vegetables, pork and fish. And, to
finish, Oolong Tea (which M actually
drank!) For the meal, we split a bottle
of excellent Sauvignon Blanc from the
Miapo Valley in Chile and Margaret is now officially and self-declared plotzed.
Without a doubt, this was one of the two best meals we have had in
Okinawa.
Why, we wonder, did we have a more enjoyable time with Chinese
food than with Japanese? Perhaps it is because, with Chinese, the food is still
recognizable after cooking, while in the Japanese, it is difficult to tell what
one is eating. Whatever the case, we
will be back to Shunten tomorrow.
Hello from me!
(Although I did add a bit here and there to R’s words above…) It’s
Tuesday here now, and we have had a lovely day!
First, Shuri Castle – which is
incredible, and then Shikinaen Royal
Garden. But to start at the
beginning…
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| School group in front of Torii gate |
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| What a wonderful welcome! |
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| One of the Castle's many gates |
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| One of the Castle's lions! |
Up around 6 am and down to breakfast about 7:30 am. To be honest, we were later than I expected
getting downstairs, and the Grand Café
was packed, but they did manage to find us a place to sit. Honestly, the breakfast buffet wasn’t great…but
as Hilton Diamond members, we don’t
have to pay for it, so I will stop complaining about it! This buffet was quite a bit more Japanese
than the other DoubleTree in town,
and in addition, most of the food wasn’t even very warm! So, we did the best we could, and then took
off for Shuri Castle, which is very
close to the hotel.
Well…we knew there was quite a walk to get to the castle,
which of course is sited on top of a hill, but we had such a frustrating time
trying to find a place to park!!
At one
point, we drove into a small parking lot, which we would gladly have paid for,
except that you have to run the car over a bump, which springs up a brace to
lock one of your tires – so you can’t get out until you pay the price!
And, there wasn’t a word in English on the
payment machine!
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| Main Palace building |
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| No shoes allowed! |
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| Beautiful tatami mats and scroll |
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| An interior garden |
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| Royal throne room! |
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| Love all the red! |
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| Room where the King transacted business |
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| Plumbing in the public washroom! |
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| Beautiful thrush! |
Good luck to that
one!
We both felt
VERY uncomfortable about going through that process, so in
frustration, we headed back to the hotel, re-parked the car and took a cab
instead!
The cab fee was its minimum –
¥550
($4.96) and
voila, we were at the
steps of the castle, and could see numerous car parks all around!
Figure that our GPS led us to the back door,
rather than the front door.
At any rate,
we were finally at the castle!
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| Natural spring for drinking water |
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| Part of the Palace |
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| Beautiful buildings |
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| Love the bell! |
It was truly amazing.
It was, like everything else in Naha, completely destroyed in 1945, and
I believe the restoration started sometime around 1975 or 76. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
There were various school groups and lots of other people visiting. Shuri is
alleged to be Okinawa’s biggest tourist attraction – either that or the
Aquarium, depending on who you talk to.
We walked up the hill and through the big Torii gate, and then followed the designated route around and into
the reconstructed throne room and family and administrative quarters of the
last rulers of the Ryukus. Red is deemed
to be a “royal” color, and it was absolutely everywhere – and boy, does it look
good with gold leaf! (I did ask R if we could do some modifications in
our guest room, to add some gold leaf trim around the ceiling, but was given “that”
look, so I guess it’s not going to happen!)
When we entered the palace building, we were given plastic bags and
asked to remove our shoes. Seemed kind
of odd, and I was hoping that R didn’t
have any holes in his socks – except the big one on top into which he puts his
foot! Our impression is that the
buildings – which date to about the 1500’s – seem more Chinese than Japanese in
style but, of course, our knowledge on this is mostly limited to photographs.
One other fun thing to do was rubber stamp their big map of
the grounds. I picked up the map around
stop 9, when we got our tickets to go inside, so missed a few of the stamps at
the beginning, but it was fun to walk around and find the next stamp spot –
everything in red, of course!
The restoration of the castle was stunning! Apparently, they were working mostly with
some old drawings and photographs from the 1920’s and 30’s. These photographs were in black and white, so
they had to guess at the colors – but everything was just lovely!
From the Castle, we decided, as it was all downhill, to walk
back to the hotel. A very nice stretch
of the legs! No problem – it’s hard, even
for me, to miss a 20 story building! Got
back to the hotel in time for the Grand Café’s
buffet lunch. Really missed the tempura
shrimp from yesterday, but had a nice and sustaining lunch. Then, out to the gardens! Not sure how Emmy (our GPS) manages it, but
she really wanted to take me through some very narrow streets and alley’s this
time. Truly, I just love driving straight
up steep slopes when around any curve or corner I could come upon traffic going
the other way. WHY does she always want to route us through back yards?!
The Shikinaen Royal
Garden was built in the 1700’s to accommodate the royal family as well as
royal guests visiting from China. It
sounds like the Chinese would make the voyage to Okinawa whenever it was time
for a new Ryukuan King to be crowned, and they would perform the ceremony. Okinawa really is more Chinese-like than
Japanese-like, for sure! The gardens are
really lovely, although truthfully, walking on paths made of Okinawan limestone
is a pain in the patooty! Very, very
uneven stones, and we had to watch our feet carefully, so as to remain
upright! But they had the requisite
beautiful pond, along with small curved bridges going across it. There were also several restored buildings
inside; lovely places, but R does
want to know how wooden structures manage to stay together through
typhoons. I have no idea!
There was a professional photo shoot going on, with a model
dressed in a kimono, and I think she may actually be in a photo or two – as R said, she was hard to miss! I thought she added a nice touch to the
landscape! We spent a leisurely time
walking around the garden paths, and finally decided enough was enough, and
headed back to the hotel.
It’s past 3 pm now, and we think we are in for the night
(unless we decide we want to see the lights on Shuri Castle…) We are both
dues for naps, but hopefully I can get this posted for the day first! Then, back downstairs to our Chinese restaurant,
where I’m thinking I may want to just order Dim Sum for dinner – the pieces we
had last night we wonderful!
So! More later!
Lots of love,
m
xxx
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