Hakone

On Columbus day we threw the girls in the car right after breakfast and took a long, long drive (about 2 hours) along Sagami Harbour (read: the drive was gorgeous)
 The funniest thing were these barrier holders in a construction area. Only in Japan would they make a cute version of that.

Once we were in Hakone (which is a sort of national park/resort area), we first went to the Open Air Museum. It was pricey, but totally worth it. I loved that it was a real museum but still very kid friendly. So here is Ellie and Clara playing in their "Woods of Net" playground.

 This is what it looked like on the outside.

They had a large building dedicated to Picasso that both Ben and I were really excited to see but ended up being a bit disappointing. It had a lot of his pottery in it which was, well, uninspiring. But there were some fun things. I guess it didn't help that it was all curated in Japanese.

Here are a few more of the exhibits we liked.

This is Ellie being a triangle inside all the triangles.

 From the inside of the a large silo like structure that you could go up. I forgot the name...

And Ben in front of a giant buffalo. Because we love Wyoming.

And then we visited what Ellie called "the Ice." And  Ben called really cool tessalations.

I have no idea who is photo bombing back there...

 We had to drag Ellie away from this, but it was way past lunch time.
So we went and grabbed some lunch at a nearby cafe and then hopped on the train to go the the cablecar and ropeway that would take us up a mountain and over some very majestic valleys to Lake Ashi.

 Clara fell asleep waiting to ride on the ropeway. And when we went over the "Valley Greater Boiling" I got incredibly nauseous from the smell of sulfur. Side note: the Japanese people in the car with us kept saying how great it smelled, because it reminded them of an onsen. To me it wreaked of rotten eggs. Though it was really cool to see all the "volcanic" activity below us as fumes plumed from the valley.

That my friends is Mount Fuji from our ropeway car. Every time we take a picture of it we can never do it justice. It was so huge compared to the mountains we were in, which were not small. Huge I tell you, HUGE!
Then we arrived at Lake Ashi were it's apparently tradition to ride the "pirate ship" from one end to the other. So we did. Um...a little anti-climatic.

 It looks so cool you just know it's going to be fun!

But it's just a diesel smelling boat that gets you from one end of the lake to the other with lots of other people,

And this pirate captain who wishes for a better life in Disneyland. Well, Ellie loved it anyhow.

But by the end of this ride I was feeling so unwell that we decided to forgo going to the shrine on the edge of the lake, and took the bus back down to where we parked our car.

Despite my nausea and the lackluster pirate ship, we really did have a great time.

 

How could you not with these two cuties?