Hotel Granvia Kyoto / Day 2

Our hotel, the Granvia Kyoto, was built by the Japan Railways company. It is a modern, business-oriented hotel, and is situated right on top of the JR Kyoto station (so the business people can just hop right onto the Shinkansen downstairs). This is a view towards the west side of the Kyoto station -- to the left are all the trains, and in the background is the Isetan, a massive department store. It has 11 floors (the escalators on the right go all the way up to the top past the big christmas tree), and the top floor has 10 or so pretty high-end (and $$$) restaurants. The 10th floor is where the 7 ramen shops are located. There are also a number of coffee shops, boulangeries, and snack/sweets stores (those that sell pretty nice mochi box sets, for example) on the ground and 2nd floors.

The escalators heading down (center of the photo) takes you downstairs into a mall that connects the Isetan and the subway station, and is called The Cube. We happened upon this massive food court on the 2nd basement floor that had many, many stalls selling bento boxes, curry sets, unagi, you name it. For once in my life I was sick of seeing so much food everywhere!

Tourists can buy passes that allow unlimited use of the JR trains for a period of time. Similar passes also exist for the bus and subway. Even though we had things to see every day, we ended up not being able to save by buying these passes.

Train and subway tickets can be bought at kiosks such as these. Many of them are quite limited in English, however; usually you look at a map overhead, determine the cost (the farther you go, the more it costs), and buy the ticket value you want.

This is a view from the northern side of the train station. To the left is a large taxi and bus terminal; from here, we can catch a bus to pretty much anywhere in the city (as long as you can understand the maps in Japanese). The tall building in the background is our hotel, the Granvia. It has 15 floors (the city has a historical height limit to 3 stories, but somehow this was allowed), and there are some very $$$ restaurants serving kaiseki meals on the top floor. There are walkways and escalators to the station, and each morning we could walk downstairs, buy coffee and pastries, or figure out which transportation to take (given all of our choices!) to get to where we wanted. The location was really good for the end of the day as well, when we were tired and wanted to just get off the train and walk upstairs to our room. Oh, and I forgot: there are more restaurants and cafes outside the station within the block, but we didn't try them.

This is what I mean by the nice breakfast options downstairs (versus paying $20 for breakfast within the hotel restaurants). There is this Burdigala bakery in the train station, and they serve these wonderfully crunchy, somewhat-buttery pastries. This was an almond-chocolate croissant and a pear danish; for $8 (including a cup of coffee), she neatly packed it inside this take-out bag with a rigid cup holder to keep everything together. Why can't Starbucks be this nice?

Our room was on the 11th floor, and when we checked in, this nice Japanese bellgirl walked us up to our room, showed us different features in our room, and was extremely gracious. The staff's english was pretty good, and the concierge was able to point us to many things, make calls for us, and even find local cheap (very casual) foods for us (we wanted oyako-don one night). Our room was very comfortable, and it definitely deserved the positive reviews we read prior to choosing it (plus the price was quite affordable). The room lighting can be controlled from a digital panel next to the bed, there was a nice desk and flatscreen TV in the room, and the view can't be beat. They even brought us special things each day waiting for us when we came home: one day we got a yuzu fruit with a note saying that it is traditionally good luck to take a bath with it as it brings good health for the year! On Christmas day, they gave us a small box of chocolates. They also had one of those Zojirushi hot water dispensers in the room, and an electric clothes press in the closet.

Our bathroom was similarly modern, with a nice counter (we're bathroom snobs when we travel) and a very nice hot shower / bathtub. This was quite a pleasant change compared to this rather sad hotel we checked into in Hong Kong (see here). The most surprising thing, though, was the electric toilet that was there!!! It had this heated toilet seat that hums whenever you sit on it, and has 3 heat levels (it can get quite hot!). It also has a bidet spray function, and also a shower function -- I read about these in Japan, but have never used one until now. Unlike what I have read, though, it did not have an air dry function, and so our tails were left dripping wet after using it. Back to good ol' fashion toilet paper.











It also tickled, but after a few days of use it was a nice thing to have. Luckily, it had instructions in English or we would have had a pretty interesting surprise by pushing those buttons.

Alright, time to head outside for Day 2!