Hello! My partner and I will be visiting Osaka/Kyoto this spring! Here’s a rough itinerary of what the plan is, though I think we can be fairly flexible and swap activities around depending on sakura blooming. Could use a quick look over just to make sure it makes sense. Overall, we have a few priorities, but we also want to stay flexible/don’t want to exhaust ourselves.
Day 1:
* Arrive at KIX in the afternoon
* Make our way to our hotel near Dotonbori via airport limousine or Nankai Airport Express line
* Eat at Dotonbori and wind down
Day 2:
* Osaka Castle
* Osaka Aquarium
* teamLab Botanical Garden
Day 3:
* USJ
Day 4:
* Day trip to Nara
* Shopping at Shinsaibashi, Pokemon cafe
* forward luggage to next hotel
Day 5:
* Head to our accommodations near Kyoto Station
* Philosopher’s Path
* Maruyama Park at night for illuminations
Day 6:
* From JR Kyoto Station, head to Kinosaki Onsen for an overnight stay while leaving luggage at Kyoto hotel
Day 7:
* Head back to Kyoto Station (same hotel)
* Shimbashi-dori, Gion
Day 8:
* Ghibli Park, if we can get tickets
* Kiyomizudera temple (+ illuminations at night)
Day 9:
* Arashiyama
Day 10:
* Fly back home
Questions:
* It seems like our vacation will coincide with spring break, which means crowds at USJ. I’m most worried about tickets/express passes being sold out very quickly (plan to use Klook) – is this one of those things where we’d need to worry about refreshing the page to snipe tickets around the time they should be released?
* We’re switching accommodations 4 times in total, but will be making use of luggage forwarding. Is it overall too hectic? Our ryokan stay at Kinosaki can‘t be moved to a different date. We could take it down to 3 if we stay at our hotel in Osaka until April 1st, but it would be more expensive and it seemed slightly easier to to get to Kinosaki directly from Kyoto vs from Osaka. Just worried if it’d be too tiring/not time-efficient.
* Are there any rhythm game arcades/crane games near Dotonbori/Shinsaibashi? We’d like a quick stop to have fun at an arcade, but we’re not sure about going out of our way to spend a lot of time in DenDen Town.
* I’ve included what I’ve found to be the most popular sakura viewing spots, but we’re definitely open to other suggestions!
Thanks in advance!