Kyoto - Imperial Palace

Kyoto became the Imperial capital of Japan in 794 and remained the capital until the Emperor built a palace in Tokyo and moved there in 1869 to exert his power. So over 1,000 years of history as the capital of a great empire means that this city has a lot of beautiful things to see, as evidenced by Kinkaku-ji Temple from the previous post.

The grounds of the Imperial Palace here in Kyoto are well maintained and beautiful. The buildings, however, were surprisingly simple. The layout and many of the buildings date back to the 1100's. Knowing that, and on the advice of others who had been here, I chose to enjoy the grounds of the palace and skipped going inside to see the buildings.

Picture of the main entrance of the palace through the inner wall.
The main entrance to the inner palace is in the distance.

Pictures of the inner wall surrounding the actual palace buildings. These gardens are inside the outer walls of the grounds. Trees, mountains, beautiful...

Nice place to take a stroll...

Or pictures of your kid...

Here's a little game to keep the kids' interest. There are these little stands around the Imperial grounds and you can get a rubbing of the various portions of the leaves to create a picture. I bet you Adayla and Tally would have been into it had they been here...
This seemed like a nice enough path to go down, so we did...
...and we found the Cat Lady! This was a college student who has three cats who follow her. I've never seen more well-behaved cats in my life! There's a cat on her lap, one on the other bench, and one in between the benches.
There are various buildings on the grounds outside of the inner wall. Most of them were residences of various nobles.

And unless you go into the inner palace area, there is no admission fee.