Our third and final day in Hokkaido found us packing up and saying goodbye to Sapporo. We packed our belongings, had breakfast downstairs and left our bags behind the desk until our bus arrived to bring us the airport. A big thank you to the great service at the Royton Sapporo.
Now if you wanted to know how far our hotel was from the Sapporo Snow Festival, here is a photo from the hotel elevator. In the middle of the photo, you can see one of the larger snow sculptures. It was great being less than a block away from the venues.
After dropping off our bags at the counter, we had a few hours to kill before the bus came to pick us up to bring us to the airport. We decided to take a walk to the Odori site and see them clean up the food huts and tear down the snow sculptures.
They did a quick and efficient job of closing down the food huts the night before.
A lot of people stop to watch the workers and national guard tear down the larger snow sculptures. You can get a better idea of the scale of these carvings by seeing the backhoes next to them.
"A" and Doug were not done with the snow festival and decided to contribute their own art.
The finished product. I think it's a winner!
By the way, if you are going to ride your bike to the festival, try not to leave it out in the middle of a heavy snowfall or you might be waiting until spring to be able to use it again.
We continued walking all the way to the train station to visit the shops there. "A", once again, found another random Japanese character we are unfamiliar with.
After, we needed to catch a taxi back to the hotel to be able to make our bus pickup time. It was a slight challenge since our driver did not speak English. Thank goodness for iPhones and my basic knowledge of a few important Japanese words. So saying, "hoteru" and giving the driver my map where I pinned our hotel got us back. Easy Peasy. Here is "A" enjoying her taxi ride.
The bus brought us back to the New Chitose Airport. There was a few more people leaving Hokkaido than when we arrived. However, the security lines still move pretty quickly.
After an hour long flight, Tokyo was in site.
While Doug waited to get our bags, "A" needed to use the bathroom. I think she just wanted to watch some television.
Finally, we arrived home after being picked up at the Haneda airport by our Yokota bus. What a great trip and completely stress free since everything was done by our tour guides.
A big thank you to our Yokota ITT tour guides, Norie and Nick. And a huge shout out to the island of Hokkaido and the city of Sapporo. What a wonderful experience. Until our next adventure.
If you would like to read more about the Sapporo Snow festival from a bloggers point of view, here is a link to the Tofugu blog.
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