After all the hullabaloo of the matsuri weekend we decided to take a little day trip. Enoshima Island is a little island south of Tokyo. One of the surprising things about the subway system here is that some of the subway lines go much further than you realize. The announcements will say ‘This train is bound for Shinjuku’, but it turns on if you stay in board it pops above ground and the next thing you know you are in Yokohama or some other city. In this case we had about a 90 minute journey from our hotel to the island. One subway and two trains – not bad at all!
At low tide a sandbar sort of connects Enoshima to the mainland, but most of the time it is an island. From the train station we walked across the causeway.
Wilf took this picture from a high point on the island – you can see the causeway across, and the beaches. The island has a definite beachey vibe to it. Lots of seafood restaurants. Lots of souvenir shops.
Wilf went for the mixed sashimi bowl. Whitebait (tiny little whole fish) are a specialty of the island – here he has them both raw and cooked.
I had the whitebait rice bowl with salmon roe, tiny little shrimp and a quail egg. It was really good! So fresh. Out in front of our restaurant there was a sign board for various types of ice cream
As good as our whitebait lunch was neither of us were prepared to try the whitebait ice cream.
It was a very hot day and after we had our lunch we were contemplating what to do next. There is a small ferry that runs from the far side of the island back to the mainland, but it was not running today. We were discussing how we felt about going up the top of the mountain when we noticed that we could buy a ticket for the escalators to the top. Escalators! Sign me up! And sure enough up we went. At the first stop there was a big Buddhist temple, so we paused to check that out. Next stop took us to a nice lookout.
There was a stand upon which we could rest our phone and use the timer to take pictures. My ineptitude at this task was such that a kind passerby took pity and took the above picture of us.
The third set of escalators took us to the top of the island, where Wilf took the first picture in this blog post. There is a lovely botanical garden up there, named after Samuel Cocking, a 19th century British merchant. There is also a structure called the Sea Candle.
Great views from up there. We couldn’t see Mt Fuji as there was too much marine haze. But it was lovely and breezy on the top deck with places to sit so we could enjoy the view.
The escalators only went up, so did have to walk back down. Fortunately the stairs were of a standard depth and width and the path was mostly through the trees, so it was a pleasant walk back down.
Given the number of souvenir shops, the size of the parking lots and the train access I expect that the island is crazy busy during the high season. We had a lovely day for our trip and are happy to finally have gotten to Enoshima.
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