Last day in Kyoto!

Today, we got an early start with our Kyoto Day Tour! We met our guide at 8:30 am and it lasted until almost 6 o'clock this evening. We got to see several temples and shrines (the first is for Buddhist and the second is for the Shinto religion). Our guide was an English speaking Japanese lady named Miko and she was great. She talked non-stop and kept all 30 of us from getting lost! The tours through the places went at a pretty fast clip because we had 7 places to visit. We hung out with a mother and son from Atlanta and it was nice to have some English speaking friends from back home to share it with. They are staying here at the Granvia too and we just saw them again! I really loved the Golden Pavillion and yes, it is covered in 22K gold leaf. So many people were there to see it. Also saw the palace of the Emperor, and the hall of the Kanon figures. (there were 1000 carved figures to protect the people of Japan!) Several places did not allow photography inside, of course, they want to sell you the photos, I'm sure! We had lunch at this place that was just floor after floor of Japanese crafts. Lots of neat stuff there and I bought a few things, of course. The lunch there was yummy too! We watched an approaching storm at our last temple visit and it rained like crazy. We were lucky to have had a dry day considering it was raining when we got up this morning too! I guess we're off to Hawaii tomorrow night. Our flight doesn't leave until 10:00 pm so were are going to try to leave our bags here for awhile . Otherwise, we would have to drag our luggage around Kyoto for hours and that would be totally weird! haha So we'll see how that goes. I am sure it will be a long day and I will be falling asleep in the airport, waiting to leave! Got to try green tea ice cream and finally, the Japanese got something right!!! It was great! We had pizza for dinner a bit ago and it was like soup on a really thin crust. Paper thin. Oh, well, they tried.........If there is some enterprising soul out there, open a Gino's here and you'll be rich!