It has been a while since I’ve posted. That’s because the most excellent social media manager has things under control. While my job has been to provide general direction for riding, food etc. But as we enter the second phase of our trip, I hope to have more time to reflect on some of our activities. Right now I am laying on the day bed in our relatively large and excellent value hotel room. The social media manager is in bed adding photos to the bevy of posts she wrote on the plane from Tokyo.
Here’s my view right now.
Here are some media from the airport. Spot Fuji and checkout the robot wheelchair.
There is much art to see and explore – so today we take our bikes here..
We are on a small fast ferry which is hurtling along at 42km per hour. We have one set of tickets booked for entry to the art museum for 10-10:30. the cycle should be about 15 minutes- or so google tells us.. printed material is longer.
Friday was all about the art in some truly magnificent buildings by Tadao Ando. Many you could not take photos in (good thing) and had ticket restrictions which also limited the number of people.
Many of the buildings we visited were made from concrete and in the brutalist style – but fitted well in the landscape.
Here are a few photos – will post more later today.
We went to Gumbo Hot Shioya. Think Japanese curry but hotter… and add different types of meat. We had spicy corn, mashed potatoes and coleslaw. It tasted great and filling. There was 60’s music playing and photos of the owner’s favourite music groups – it certainly was on theme. Enjoyable. With beer it was around $15 each. Certainly gave energy to walk back up the hill to where we are staying…despite the cold wind!
After the long cycle with head-on winds over the final bridge it was pleasing to make it to the hotel as it was getting dark. in searching for dinner Kym found a couple of locations one of them was pizza. Given the tough ride (all that climbing and head wind) we jumped at the opportunity.
The place featured a traditional wood fired pizza open inside the restaurant. While the menu was in Japanese we used the translate functions on our phones to decide on:
Salad
Prosciutto with buffalo mozzarella
Four cheeses pizza
Picante (spiced meat with tomato base)
Bottle of red wine
Dessert- yuzu ice cream and chocolate cake
The experience was a delight – it reminded us of Etica our favourite pizza place in Adelaide. Even down to the music on the playlist (what is it with Phil Collins..?!!). h
The pizzas themselves were perfect, and great flavour of the toppings. Four cheeses include a blue cheese (oh!). To top it off we had dessert – the ice cream at the perfect amount of citrus… ah. It was a perfect end to a great meal.
The pizza maker was Daniel who had moved to Imabari from Sydney. He mentioned he had cycled the Shimanami Kaido – twice in one day! (That is at least over 140km in a day) Truely amazing – and a super impressive effort.
When next in Imabari we really recommend this place for dinner – especially if you cycled, as it’s a great reward for getting to the destination… and will certainly replace all the carbohydrates used on the ride.
