Hotel Nikko Narita

We're overnighting at the Hotel Nikko and we know that all we have to do is just hop on board the hotel bus. The details we were given were a bit on the vague side but we shouldn't have worried it is all so well sign-posted we find it without any problems.

We wait for no more than 5 minutes and wonder why we never thought on checking the weather conditions for Tokyo. Maybe if we did we wouldn't be standing here holding onto our thick winter coats.

Another 5 minutes later and we're dropped off at the hotel along with most of the bus.

Just like the airport there are two lines - one for business and another for economy. We're served almost straight away and within a minute we have our key.

The first thing we do when we reach our room is crank up the air-conditioning and the next is have a long cold shower!

Suitably refreshed we consider our dinner options - the hotel is owned by JAL so the stay is all incorporated into the ticket and part of the deal is that we have dinner and breakfast vouchers at one of the hotel restaurants.

There's also a sushi bar and we decide to check that out first - unfortunately but not surprisingly it's full of smokers and that's really the last thing we need. So we decide to check out the restaurant to which we have a voucher and find it will be at least 30 minutes.

Not really wanting to wait so long or sit in smoke our final option is room service. There's not much choice and we feel a bit disappointed but we opt for those hotel standards, club sandwich



and hamburger



Poor Paalo feels so bad about this - though we did have some Japanese crackers



I especially liked the nori wrapped ones.

To round things off we sample a couple Japanese ice creams



Outside are two soft sweet biscuits - inside caramel studded vanilla ice cream on a chocolate base.






A wafer covering a mix of vanilla ice cream and red beans - this is surprisingly good.