This was our second visit to this city which was leveled by the first atomic bomb in history on August 6, 1945 and 25 days before I was born. We arrived and were docked at 10am to a small welcoming committee. Our plan for the day was to independently tour with Alex and Barb whom we've previously cruised with.
We caught the second shuttle which took us downtown to City Hall from which we walked to the tram a few blocks away. It was two stops to reach the Peace Memorial Park where we were to spend the bulk of our time. The remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall (now known as the A-Bomb Dome) was our first stop. It marks close to ground zero where the bomb detonated in the air above it.
From there we made our way to the Flame of Peace (never to be extinguished until there are no more nuclear bombs), the Memorial Museum, the Victims' Memorial Hall, the Children's Peace monument, the Memorial Mound (70,000 persons buried there), and several other memorials. They are all a somber reminder of the effects of the use of nuclear weapons. Here's a layout of the park.
From the park we walked to the Hiroshima Castle and toured it before walking over to the wonderful Shukkeien Gardens where we spent a relaxing couple of hours walking the pond, feeding the carp and turtles, watching fish jump high out of the water, finding beautiful land crabs, and admiring the manicured beauty of the garden. There was virtually nobody there and we closed it up at 6pm.
We walked back to the location of a tram we could take back to the ship as the last shuttle left an hour earlier. We ended up hailing a taxi which dropped us off in 20 minutes at the ship. A tram ride would have been close to an hour plus a 10 minute walk.
We grabbed a quick dinner and were joined by Ann and John and we chatted as the ship slowly left its berth at 8pm and headed out to sea in pitch black darkness. We went to an 8:30pm repeat of Terry Greenberg's Japanese culture lecture and then participated in the comedy show of Tim Kaminski. It was fun. I played the scarecrow in a recreation of the Wizard of Oz. We finished off our night at the 10:30 feeding before retiring.
Tomorrow is a sea day and we're passing through the Kanmon Straights for the 3rd time this cruise. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment