Hotel Rooms and Road Tripping

We haven't been on a road trip for over three years now and I was kind of looking forward to it.  The drive was a little rougher than I pictured before we left.  But first I want to talk about our hotel rooms.  

I thought we were planning this trip early enough but I was wrong.  It was hard to find an affordable place in Hiroshima.  They were surprisingly expensive and next to impossible to find a room for eight people.  We ended up with three tiny Air BNBs right next to each other.  

They were not great.  And while I am not picky I had a hard time sleeping because I keep thinking about the people who actually live in this apartment building.  It was also difficult because there was no place for our family to all be together.  We kept shuffling back and forth between rooms trying our hardest to be quiet for the neighbors.

Bob and I slept in different rooms and I put Tucker and Leon alone in the third room.  I made sure they locked the door and I set up the baby monitor in their room so I would hear if anything started to happen.  I was worried about the kids being alone before we went, but that didn't seem to be much of an issue when we got there.  Japan is so safe.

This was the worst of the three places we stayed it, but honestly it wasn't that bad.  We were gone the whole day anyway and it was only a few minutes walk to the Peace Park so the location was amazing.

In Japan we pay for parking, like, all the time.  It is pretty standard for us to pay to park when we are not at home: grocery shopping, cool parks, restaurants, wherever. You pay to park and sometimes you get validated sometimes you don't.

After Hiroshima we drove a few hours North toward Kyoto.  The rest stops in Japan were pretty expressive.  Each one we stopped at was just a step up from any I've seen in America.  They were pretty streamlined as well.  All the highways are toll roads so they have it set up that you can pull into a rest stop without getting off the toll road.  Once you pull up there is a nice rest stop area with food, bathrooms, and shopping and then one gas station and you jump back on the road.  No driving a mile this way or that way looking for gas or which fast food you want to stop at.

I like the nicely labels bathrooms and mini urinals even in the women's side. 

For this part of the drive I had my camera in the front seat with me and so I kept opening up the window trying to get pictures.  Tucker, who was sitting right behind me was not a fan of this.  Most of the pictures came out blurry or I was just too slow with the window to take at all, but I got a few nice shots.

The leaves were changing and it was beautiful.

Calista and Beatrix didn't do that well in the car, but I'd say they acted appropriately for their age.  Everyone else did pretty good.  In the past we had movies to watch but this time all we had were audio books.  We listened to the first two Harry Potter books.  I love the audio of those.  The voice actor does such a good job.  Of course Calista and Beatrix couldn't follow so they just sat there bored and screamed or were loud randomly.