Sunday, March 2, 2008

Shuri Castle & More

First of all... a montage. Of silly child. Can't you just see her on the frappucino sugar buzz?
We parked a little ways away from Shuri Castle because we had no clue where the parking for it was. So we had a beautiful walk on a sunny day. Here's the Pook by one of the outside walls in her snappy little hat.
On little podiums throughout the castle perimeter there are pictures like this:
As it ends up, that's an aerial view of the flower garden next to it - really cool:

The castle itself with Craig & Mia standing in front of it. Quite ornate, lots of amazing details.

I took this from on top of a wide wall outside the gift shop. It didn't take long for a staff member to motion me to GET DOWN! Gomen nasai! (At least I got the shot)
A cool dragon detail on the castle.
We had lunch at the restaurant next to the gardens. The usual plastic food displays were in a case outside the restaurant - here's Anpanman and his crew surrounding the kid's meal. Mia's was actual food that looked exactly like this.
A couple of t-shirts for sale at the nearby vendor.
In the car on the way home I snapped this of the Yui Rail tracks. The train runs above the roads throughout Naha. We'll have that adventure one day soon for sure.
At a stoplight I nabbed a shot of the British Rock studio on rte. 58.
I can't believe we were going about 50 km/h when I took this - I've been dying to catch this Spidey in a picture!
After Shuri we went to the Starbucks down the road - this was in the window so I gave it a shot. It was a "volcano" - well, they poured a shot of espresso into the dip in the cake, and then topped it with whipped cream. It was not too sweet and very delicious.
As we waited for our coffee drinks, I snapped this outside. I didn't notice the hilarious girl in the doorway until I downloaded it. Too funny!
The drive-thru menu - you can see the menu items at the *bucks here are really different. The food is actually really good! There are wraps and hot sandwiches. Yum.

My flickr site has a good bunch of photos, and my Shutterfly album has all 82. If you care to kill some time. Hopefully some news tomorrow regarding the lockdown end. However, I WILL be getting out for an OIWC luncheon tomorrow - we're going to Naha! More on that later.

1 comment:

erniesbudolab said...

Nissan Cube! Not available (or safe) in The States. I still want one, though...Or a Suzuki Swift.

Okinawa isn't huge, yet the last time I was there, I counted four Starbucks with street frontage and one inside a Jusco. I wanted to try to confuse a barista by ordering a tall half-decaffeinated half-cap/lowfat latte with a rondele of lemon zest extra foam no-whip to go, but when the guy turned around he had a Steve Martin pin on his apron. So I figured he knew the joke and I wussed out.