北海道珍道中:その1
ちょうどいい時間に着く空港行きのバスがない為、早朝に頑張って起きてバスで一路羽田空港へ。搭乗時間2時間ちょい前に着き、とりあえずチェックイン。そしたらたまたまその前の飛行機に空席があるということで、予定よりも1時間早く飛ぶ飛行機に急遽変更。それでも待ち時間が1時間あったので、空港ラウンジへ。そこは提携クレジットカードを見せたら無料で利用できるラウンジ。そこでは飲み物飲み放題。40分ほどそこでコーヒーを飲みながら、ボッーとまったり。それから飛行機で新千歳空港へ。 到着した時は小雨でしたが、電車で札幌へ移動している間にすっかり青空に!それから心地よい夏日(昼間半袖、夕方以降は一枚羽織るくらい)が滞在中はずっと続きました。とりあえず、腹ごしらえ!ということで、目指すは札幌駅近くの海鮮丼の食べれる店へ。おいしい海鮮丼に感動して、デジカメで激写することすら忘れてました。(苦笑)腹ごしらえの後は、大通り公園近くのホテルへ移動。着いた途端、ホテルの人に「奥様、お誕生日おめでとうございます。」と言われて、ちょっとうれしかった。事前にhiroroがホテルに言ってたようで、部屋に入るとホテルから誕生日カードとちょっとした粗品が置いてあった。その日は朝がすごく早かったので、それから1時間半ばかり二人でお昼寝。短時間でも寝たら全然違うよね!?すっかり元気になり、まずは徒歩15分のところにある二条市場へカニや鮮魚を買いに。そこでは私の腕の見せどころ。5000円の毛カニを交渉して3000円に負けてもらいました。イクラも買いました。すっかり魚屋のおじさん達と仲良くなり、おいしいカニの見分け方や食べ方なども教わって帰ってきました。カニの後は、おやつタイム!札幌では有名なフルーツタルトのお店で誕生日ケーキの代わりにフレッシュフルーツのタルトとおいしい紅茶に舌つづみ。そこで旅行本を出して、今後の予定を立ててみる。まぁ、今日は札幌でのんびり、明日は富良野や美瑛にレンタカーで回ろうということになりました。そこで早速レンタカー探し。まずは電話をして空き状況や料金を確認。数件電話をして、結局トヨタレンタカーへ行き、Vitzを予約。それから道庁を散歩して、またホテルへ戻り、しばし休息。前回は雪景色 だったけど、今回は緑が多く、景色もガラリと変わり、それもそれですごく良かった。夕飯を食べる前に「テレビ父さん」の愛称で親しまれている札幌テレビ塔から夜景を楽しむ。ちょうど夕飯時ということもあり、案外人が少なかった。自分達と入れ替わりにどぉ~と人がきたので、人ごみが苦手な私達にはラッキーでした。でも、やっぱり冬に比べて、観光客は少ないかな?!夕飯はススキノの寿司屋へ。新鮮な魚はしょうゆがなくても食べれるし、魚の身が甘いということを改めて実感。「おいしいね!」を連呼しながら、平らげる。その後、ブラブラ散策しながら適当に歩いていると...初めて私が高校の修学旅行で札幌に来た時にみんなで食べたラーメン屋さんを発見!ちょっと感動。ちなみにそのラーメン屋はタクシーの運転手のおじさんオススメのラーメン屋で、旅行本には載ってないから今まで場所がわかりませんでした。そんな話しをしながら、ホテルに戻り、その日はお休みなさい。そしてまだまだ続く...Because there's no bus on a good timetable, we got up very early and got ourselves on the bus to Haneda airport. We got there 2 hours before our flight and checked ourselves in. There was a vacant seats on the plane an hour before ours, so we were lucky to change our flight to an hour early. We still had an hour before our flight, so we went to an airport lounge. Anyone using a creditcard may use this lounge. In this lounge, there's a drink bar. We spent our free time drinking coffees for about 40 minutes. Then we took our flight from Haneda to Shin Chitose. When we got there, it was raining a bit. But as we were on our train from Shin Chitose airport to Sappro, the sky became sunny. During our 3 days stay, the weather was nice and sunny.(Short sleeve shirt during day and something to put on during the evening.) When we got to Sapporo, we decided to eat seafood lunch near the station. We were so happy to eat good seafood that we forgot to take photos on our digital cameras. Then we got ourselves to our hotel nearby Odori Park. As soon as we got to our hotel, hotel staff said to me, "Happy Birthday, madame." I was surprised and happy. hiroro told the hotel staff that it was my birthday, so when we got to our room, there was a little present from the hotel. Because we were up ealy that morning, we took about an hour and half nap. After our nap, we took a 15 minutes walk to Nijyo Market to buy crabs and seafoods. That's where I show my skills to negotiate. I was able to negotiate ¥5000 crab to be sold for ¥3000. We also bought salmon eggs,too. We became friends with the market vendor and he taught us how to look for good crabs and how to cook crabs. After seafood shopping is tea time. We went to a cafe well known for fresh tarts. We enjoyed some fresh tarts as my birthday cake and nice cups of teas. As we spent our time in the cafe, we looked at our guidebooks and made our plans. We decided to take it slow and spend our time in Sapporo today and tommorow, we'll rent a car and drive up to Furano. So we made some calls to rental car stores to check the vacancy and the costs. We decided to rent a car at Toyota, so we went to reserve Vitz. Then we walked around the city hall and walked back to our hotel to rest.Last time we were here, it was snowing. This time it's full of greens and the scenaries looked very different. Before dinner, we went up to see the scenaries in Sapporo TV tower also called by the nickname, "TV daddy". When we got there, there were hardly any people because it was just dinner time. As we were going down, many sightseers came up. But compared to winter season, it seeems like there are fewer sightseers. For dinner, we went to a sushi restaurant in Susukino. Fresh seafood, you don't have to dip it in some soysauce and the seafood itself is sweet. We ate as we said, "Boy, this is delicious!!". On our way back, we just walked around. By coincidence, we found a Sapporo Ramen noodle shop that I had been to once, when I first came to Hokkaido on a highschool trip. It was a reccomended Ramen noodle shop by a taxi driver, so it's not in any guidebooks. So I didn't remember where it was. We talked about it as we went back to our hotel and day one is over. To be continued.