Oushuu33Kannon Temples 6-7 Part 13

We arrived back in Matsushima, tired, thirst, and hungry, at about 3 p.m. We had not planned the day in advance and only ended up here because of the wind - it was the only place we could get to - so we had not planned for meals. Usually on a trip like this we would have bought something at a convenience store and carried it with us. We stopped to eat a little before the tourist area. The restaurant was off to the left in the next picture. The food was nothing special but it tasted great because we were so hungry.
A hundred meters or so passed the restaurant we came to the park that forms the center of the tourist area. A tour boat was just loading and we were tempted to take a ride around the bay but decided that we were much too tired.
The port next to the park is quite busy. There are tour boats of all sizes and further ahead (to the right in the next picture) there is a commercial port.
This picture shows some of the many islands that are scattered around the bay.
This is Ian, standing in front of some meditation caves that have been carved into the rock cliff. They face the bay and must have been wonderful places to sit and meditate, at least before they built the tourist path between them and the water.
As we continued around the path, I was able to look back and get a good view of that large tour boat that we saw earlier.
This part of the bay was very pleasant and did not seem to have as many tourists as in the previous portion.
We finally reached the train station and I had just enough time to take this picture, looking back toward the bay, before our train arrived.
There was a fairly large number of people waiting on the platform and most of them were young, teenagers generally. When the train's doors opened, these youngsters ran, pushing and shoving, into the train and took all the seat. This meant that we, along with all the other older people, had to stand all the way back to Sendai Station.

All in all it had been a good trip, turning a disaster into a treat. Tomorrow I will be at school all day, but on Thursday I will begin posting the next segment of our pilgrimage.