After a somewhat unsettled night sleep on the bus we arrived to a sunny morning in Hiroshima at roughly 08:30am. The overnight bus ride was fine except one to many toilet breaks, perhaps there were a few weak bladders on the bus... And it wasn't Laura's for once! Apart from that we no real complaints about the overnight bus and was a very good and cheap method of transport. We heaved on our bags and headed in the general direction of our hostel, or so we thought. After getting a bit lost I had to ask the very friendly staff in a nearby hotel who kindly pointed us in the right direction. About five minutes later we found our hostel and checked in very quickly. No shoes are allowed inside the hostel but slippers are provided which were very cosy. We both had a much needed shower and change followed by banana and crisp sandwiches... Separately of course!

On the way out Laura added a pin to Stornoway on a giant map of where the hostels guests are from.... As No one had pinned it yet and she considers it home. The reception guy got very excited and wanted to take a photo ...then he straight away added it to Facebook on the K's house page lol... So now there is a random picture of Laura on facebook pointing to a pin haha.

We knew we wold be tired today so a joint decision was made to leave the atomic bomb stuff until tomorrow! Today we would make for the island of Miyajima just off the coast of Hiroshima. We caught a local tram which guided us through the town at quite a slow pace. It was nice to people watch as the local people went about their business around us. There was even an elderly gentleman with a Tiffany's bag which Laura wished was for her.... Clearly romance wasn't dead after all. We reached our stop and made the very brief walk across to the ferry with the hills in the background which reminded Laura of Ullapool, I thought more like Jurassic park!! The ferry was a very short ten minutes and in the distance you could see the much photographed floating shrine gate, the prized attraction and voted in the top three scenic moments in all of Japan! Even at this point both of us were feeling tired but we would battle on regardless.

After docking the first thing we noticed was now immaculately clean everything is. There were signs warning you to keep close hold of your things in case the deer eat them. A bit random we thought until you saw loads of wild deer roaming around the place. They are protected local island deer that have become very tame due to tourists feeding them. Anything like paper in the your hand they are likely to snatch it including unfortunate cases of passports and rail passes. Amongst the herds of deer there were lovely shrines, pagodas, monuments and statues. The highlight was the floating shrine gate, which luckily we had caught at high tide. This meant the gate seemed to float in the water as supposed to most of the day when there is just mud. We got some amazing snaps here and made are away around the shrine. Unfortunately the rain came and we decided to make the climb but the mountain because he view would not be very good on a day like this. Our search for shelter lead us to small bakery selling the local cakes. These are maple leaf shaped cakes filled with various fillings such as chocolate, sweet bean, custard cream and cheese. I had a chocolate one and Laura a custard cream, both were delicious. Our tiredness really kicked on at this point and we decided to head back to the mainland and invariably our hostel.

That late afternoon evening we basically chilled out with cups of tea and snacks. The blog needed updating as both of us had got pretty slack with it! Various other travellers were in the living room but mostly kept themselves to themselves. One unfortunate traveller had lost his passport which we all thought would be an absolute nightmare!! I headed out to local fast food joint but Laura opted out. Once I had eaten it was not long before we headed to bed. The other person in our dorm was the traveller who had lost his passport and his name was Ben from Melbourne. He said he was heading back out and was going to check in the restaurants and cafes he had been to that day, we both wished him luck. Our dorm had bunk beds and I chose the top and Laura the bottom. we nattered for a bit but I can't really remember much so I must of feel asleep very quickly.