April was a pretty boring uneventful month for us, but we started May off with a bang! On Saturday, we took a ferry to ie island. It was a short 30 minute ferry ride on this huge ferry. I was impressed by the ferry, it even had a little snack shop on the inside. After arriving on the island, we found a place to rent bicycles. I got a purple one! Unfortunately, it sounded like it was going to break down on me the whole time. I literally thought the chain would break and we'd be on the other side of the island. That would have sucked! The island is small enough to ride a bike all around it. Everything I read said that it was mainly flat so riding a bike wouldn't be a big deal. I don't know where they went but there were quite a few hills we had to go up, twice they were so big that we had to get off our bike and push it up (our bikes didn't have gears on them). But it was so much fun riding bikes around and perfect weather for it!
Our main purpose of visiting ie island was to attend the lily festival! We were a little nervous about going because it's Golden Week here in Japan. There are a bunch of holidays the first week of May for the Japanese, so they call it Golden Week. A lot of them will take off work and travel during this week which means traffic and all the tourist attractions become super busy! It turns out that we had no problem with traffic or crowds, it was a perfect day to go. The lily fields were beautiful; tons and tons of lily's. The smell was amazing as well!
Other than the lily's, we stopped at a few other places around the island. We hiked up Mt. Gusuku, which is the only mountain on the little island. It was about a 15 minute hike up; there were stairs so it was a pretty easy hike. Lots of stairs, straight up too, at times I felt like I was climbing a ladder. When we got to the top, we got a nice aerial view of the island!
We also stopped at Wajee View Point, Niya-Thiya Caves, and the Ernie Pyle monument. The Niya-thiya cave is where Okinawans hid as the Great Okinawan War was happening. There is a stone in the cave that is said to be a fertility stone. If you pick it up, supposedly you'll get pregnant. Don't worry, I didn't touch it! :) Our last stop before the port was the Ernie Pyle monument. Ernie Pyle was an American journalist who died in the Okinawan war.
Overall, it was an amazing day trip! If we ever go again, we agreed that we should take all our snorkel gear. There looked to be quite a few good snorkeling spots on ie island!
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