Nagasaki - Our Golden Week Holiday

2nd, 3rd May, 2007

We caught a 5:30pm train and headed to Nagasaki for two nights and Fukuoaka for one night. Nagasaki is on a different island to Himeji. Himeji is on Honshu and Nagasaki is on Kyushu. It took us 5 hours to get there and we even had to go under the sea and everything. We pretty much slept the whole way there. We finally got there or so we thought……we quickly got our luggage together and hopped off the train. When we got off we soon realised that we had gotten off at the wrong stop. It certainly wasn’t Nagasaki. Oops!! By the time we had realised the train doors had closed and we were left there with our luggage looking very confused and worried. We went up to the ticket man and fortunately he told us that there was another train coming which we were able to catch. PHEW!! We eventually made it to our hotel and basically went straight to bed.

Lauren was feeling sick in the morning so we thought it was best to take her to a doctor so that she could get some antibiotics. The hotel assistant was kind enough to walk us to the hospital. Lauren was checked out and was diagnosed with laryngitis and pharyngitis. She was given some antibiotics and we were on our way. Poor Lauren – this was not the best time to get sick. She battled on though. She did get a little more energy as the day went on but she was nowhere near 100%.

After we finished from the hospital we headed to Hollander Slope which is a beautiful stone street built by the Dutch. We went into some old house and from the top of the hill could see some fantastic views. We then came across a beautiful temple which was magnificent to look at.
























From here we headed to Nagasaki’s Confucian Shrine – called Koshi-Byo. This shrine is the only one in the world built outside China by Chinese hands and the land that it is on is Chinese territory. It was very amazing to look at and very beautiful. There was a museum of Chinese history inside too. I bought a Chinese top as a souvenir.













We then walked to China town to grab some lunch. There were people everywhere being a public holiday and all the restaurants were full. We ended up just grabbing a steamed bun and a bamboo wrap from a stall and sitting in a park to eat it. I enjoyed it all the same.

Our next stop was Glover Gardens. We caught an elevator (would you believe) up to the top of the gardens. The views from up here were remarkable. The gardens were very well kept and it was very peaceful just strolling through them. There were many different things to see in these gardens and so we just took our time looking around.




























After the gardens we stumbled across this really cool street with lots of souvenir shops and stalls. There is some famous cake in Nagasaki called ‘Castella’ and we came across a shop that let you taste test all the different flavours. The flavours included: original, green tea, custard cheese and chocolate. My favourite was the custard cheese. I couldn’t resist buying a box!!

Dinner was very interesting. We walked into one place and got rejected so we went quite a distance to another one and were rejected for the second time. We think it was because they were full but who knows really. We finally found a place that would take us – I was starving by this stage. We looked on the menu to order and found that everything was in Japanese and had no pictures. Great!! It was like a pick one and you get what you get. Marie ordered some bean dish, Lauren ordered a noodle soup dish and I ordered sweet and sour pork, we also ordered spring rolls. Well Marie’s meal came out and was totally not what she ordered. It looked like cabbage. Her meal was $16 too so it couldn’t be cabbage. Anyway she tried it and it was cold and when she bit it, it was all crunchy. Gross. I tried a bit of it and realised how disgusting it actually was. There was some people sitting on the same table as us and they saw our faces when we tried it and started laughing. We asked them what it was and by using hand gestures we worked out that it might have been sea urchin. No wonder it was foul. My meal came and it was what I ordered and Lauren’s was ok too so we shared our meals with Marie. We ended up paying quite a bit considering we came out not full. It was a funny experience nevertheless. When we left the restaurant we ducked into Lawsons (a convenient store) to buy a few snacks for the hotel where we were going to relax in our PJ’s and watch Sex and the City.