Well, it's been a while! Things have kept up pace through the holidays and into the new year. We've managed to keep on exploring, so hopefully I'll get to post some of the excitement on the blog.
We were able to use one of Mr. A's days off to go exploring! Mr. A planned a wonderful outing to the Yara Castle Ruins. It's a lesser-known 'cas
tle', but a wonderful park with beautiful scenery, challenging and easy trails, and lots of pretty water in the form of ponds, lakes, steams and (small) rivers. It's a great little getaway that's only about 20 minutes from our house. Mr. A has
a thought to possibly use it as a place to run when he's got a little extra time.
Most of the 'castle' stones are right at the beginning. You hike up
some stone stairs next to a wall to enter into the park. Inside they've made a fun little playground with nifty concrete slides. Then you get to the really pretty part of the park. It has tons of winding trails in lush forest.
There were a number of shrines around the ruins, some of which were clearly still visited regularly. We found this one particularly beautiful, and as you can see, someone still comes by occasionally to pay tribute to those housed inside the shrine.
Here are another couple views of the scenery. One is from the top of a large, concrete structure in the middle of an open area. The other is of the main river which runs at the base of the park in an area where the river widens a little.
Once we had finished exploring, we were quite hungry for lunch. However, we wanted to head NE to go to Yellowbox, which is a furniture store where they sell Ashley furniture. They sell the same furniture that they sell on base, but for better prices. We're hoping to get our furniture in soon! We are SO excited to sleep on a bed that isn't base furniture!
However, before we could go to the furniture store, we HAD to stop for lunch, as we were completely famished. A day at the ruins will do that to ya. So we stopped at a McDonalds to ask where we could find a sushi restaurant close by. They sent us to an a.maz.ing sushi-go-round. "What is a sushi-go-round?" you may ask. Ah, the glories of the sushi-go-round. It is a lovely restaurant where they have a conveyer belt filled with little plates
of sushi which traverses the entire restaurant. See a piece you like? Just pick it up off the conveyer belt and it's yours!
However, this particular sushi-go-round was even more awesome. It had this fantastic little screen where you could order exactly what you wanted. They would make your sushi in the back, and it would come out on a little track just a
bove the conveyer belt. Four little plates could come out at once, led by an adorable rubber ducky. Yes, that's right folks, a rubber ducky.
Each plate has a specific design which tells you how much the sushi cost. We got a little confused by the ordering process at first and right at the end. Mr. A ended up ordering four of the same type of sushi, two with and two without wasabi. Oops. It's a good thing they were delicious! The one below was 'with'. Um, can you say adorable little warning flag?
Well, that concludes the most adventurous part of the day :) Hope you enjoyed!
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