what do you see?

Monday morning, after our quick weekend in Sapporo. We got the night bus from Kitami on Friday, and managed to get a surprising amount of sleep before our arrival at just before 6am. It was hauntingly dark at that time, surprising as usually it gets blindingly bright ridiculously early here...anyway, we wandered around kind of aimlessly until Starbucks opened at 7.30...the rest of the day was mostly spent shopping and walking a lot. The few old buildings left in Sapporo are very interesting to vist, gives you a lonely feeling thinking of the early pioneers setting up the city. We checked into our hotel (tiny room, but OK, especially for the special half-price deal we found) at 2 and slept a while before going back out for more shopping, dinner (at a realy nice Asian restaurant) and a look at the Christmas illuminations, and "German village" set-up selling various souvenirs and foods from fake log-cabins!

On Sunday we checked out and had breakfast in a different coffee shop. Then we headed for the shops again, via the botanical gardens (closed on Sundays!) and the famous "Clock Tower", another old wooden building still standing in the centre of the city. We had lunch at a branch of "Lion" (beer hall/restaurant chain) - a nice one, with semi-private concrete "rooms" for each table and then killed some time before the bus back at 4.30 (got home around 9.30). So a good weekend in some relatively busy city-life.