One Last Biking Adventure: Lake Sanaru and Hamamatsu Castle Park

On March 8th Jonathan and I went on one last biking adventure. Well, we went biking the following weekend too but it was only for a couple hours, maybe even less. So the 8th was our last long biking adventure.

I think we left sometime between 10:30 and 11:00. We planned on biking to an observatory at the top of the Kanzanji Ropeway at lake Hamana.

We arrived at Lake Sanaru around noon and got some food from 7-Eleven and ate it by the lake. We had planned on just eating a quick lunch there and continuing to the ropeway but decided to just spend more time at the lake and then go to the castle park instead later. 

It was such a nice day! I was really glad to have some good weather before we left Japan. 

  

That rice ball had seaweed and salmon. So delicious!

I had a cream puff with strawberry cream. Very tasty!

After we finished eating we got back on our bikes and went around the lake.

We always see quite a bit of wildlife at Lake Sanaru.

The baby turtle was soooo cute!

I was excited to see sakura! The trees weren't big, but the flowers were very pretty. 

We parked our bikes and hiked through the woods a little bit.

I've seen big snails a few times when running along Tenryu River, so I was glad to finally have an opportunity to take a picture of one. 

Then we biked to Hamamatsu Castle Park, which was on the way back to Jonathan's apartment so it was convenient.

I thought that building near the entrance was cute. Then I realized that it was a koban, a small police station, so I liked it even more!

None of the sakura were blooming yet, but the plum blossoms were in full bloom. I don't like them as well as sakura because but they are still bright and cheerful!

We walked around the park for an hour or so, got a snack, and then headed back to Jonathan's apartment. 

I had biked past that building several times and hadn't noticed that strange painting before, haha.

We were both soooo tired when we got back around 5:30. I was glad that we hadn't biked all the way to the ropeway which would have been twice as far. We did some extra biking around the lake and hiking and stuff, but it still would have been more tiring.

This post really makes me miss Japan because our biking trips were some of my favorite things that I did in Japan. I miss my bicycle and being able to bike pretty much anywhere.