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After our lovely Japanese breakfast at the hotel, we walked to the station and boarded the 10:33 Hikari Shinkansen to Odawara. The trip took about 2 hours and we were both feeling a little under the weather. We have some kind of cold which is making Christina dizzy and Charles weird. At Odawara we changed to the "romance car" train which took us extremely slowly up into the mountains to Gora. We saw some blossoms! I think they were plum blossoms.
There we changed to a cable car which took us up a super steep hill to our hotel. The town of Gora is small but steep. After depositing our bags we walked back down the hill to the station to find something to eat. We also had a very cute piece of cake and coffee at a cute coffee shop. We walked back up the hill to our hotel. Charles has discovered a new exercise called "push your wife up a hill" which really gets the heart rate up! We checked in properly and booked the private bath for 6:30 and rested at our room for a while. Christina got pretty dizzy and needed to lie down, and Charles was kind of dizzy too. Maybe we both have a virus or maybe we just got too tired.
At 6:30 we went down to the private bath which we had reserved. In Japanese baths you wash yourself first so you don't dirty the bath water, which is special mineral spring water here. The bath itself was outside in a little enclosed garden. Every now and then a pipe gurgled and gave us fresh super hot water from the mountain! It was very hot water and even though it is cold outside we had to sit with just our legs in for a while! The bath was reserved for 45 minutes but we didn't stay in that long. Afterwards our heads felt a little bit clearer.
At 8:00 we had our dinner time! The dinner was made up of many tiny courses. Christina didn't eat the shellfish courses which caused a bit of confusion among the staff but we figured it out. The degustation went for almost one and a half hours! The best thing was the chicken and vegetable soup which cooked over a tiny fire at the table. The fire is a special thing they light which burns hot for a set amount of time - half an hour I guess. It's set beneath a bowl and cooked the chicken!
Now we're in the lobby using the wifi and considering whether to have another bath tonight. It wouldn't be a reserved bath but rather a men's or ladies bath in the hotel. We are kind of curious to see what they're like!
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