The next morning, we woke up early to eat breakfast before walking over to the Swedish Embassy. I had booked the hotel close by, so that we would save time getting there in the morning. After eating and checking out of the hotel, we were able to leave our bag in the hotel to pick up later, we walked the few blocks to get there when they opened at 9am.
The Swedes have arrived!
Inside the Embassy.
My gorgeous daughter and I!
When we were finally done with applying for the passports, getting the pictures taken and bio-metrics were done, we had about two hours before we needed to get on the shuttle bus back to the airport to be able to be there to check in on time for the flight. We would have loved to stay for the weekend and really explored Tokyo, this huge city, but there wasn't any time for that. We needed to get back home as Chris needed to get back into work early Saturday, as he had missed work on Thursday after school with Benjamin and Isabella and also on the Friday, as it was no school that day. Good for Cassandra to not miss out on school, but for Chris it was tricky not having those hours at work.
Normally it wouldn't have been such drama with work, but as he was leaving very shortly to go to South Korea, he had lots to get done, different security clearances to go through, courses to take and lots of paperwork to fill out regarding this trip. Plus that he had the normal work load to do, and to fill in his guys on the different Camps on the work, to take over while he was gone. So, with other words, there was no time for us to stay in Tokyo. Such a shame, as we were anyway there, but still, we decided to not just sit around and wait for the shuttle bus, but to do at least something.
As we were lucky to see on the map, Tokyo Tower was just a few blocks away and well in walking distance from the Embassy and the hotel where we had the bag. Perfect, as if you can only see one thing, you want it to be something special and from Tokyo Tower, we would be able to see a lot of things, if even from above!
The weather was wonderful, and we had a good walk there!
Crossed a little road bridge and we were almost there!
Tokyo Tower is a communications and observation and observations tower. At 332.9 meter (1,092 ft), it is the second - tallest structure in Japan. The structures is an Eiffel Tower inspired lattice tower that is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations. The two-story Main Observatory is at 150 meters (490 ft), while the smaller Special Observatory reaches a height of 249.6 meters (819 ft). When we we were there, the smaller higher observatory was closed, so we could only go up to the first one at 150 meters.
The elevator up took only about a minute..
On clear days you would be able to see Mt. Fuji just above the second from left high building in the middle of the picture. This day was sunny and nice, but the smog further out in the city was still covering it up.
Typical Japanese - these photo ops with date! November 4th, 2016.
After checking out the tower, getting some souvenirs and taking lots of pictures, it was time to walk back to the hotel to get our bag and then walk back to the ANA Hotel where the shuttle bus would leave from. We just had time to grab a few snacks and water before getting on the bus to the airport.
On the flight, on our way home after our mini trip just the two of us!
Chris and the kids were picking us up and we were pretty tired and ready for bed after a very busy two days. Even if we only had a short trip, it was wonderful to travel with my oldest, just on our own! I really wish we could have stayed longer, but we made memories that we will keep and treasure, and I can't wait to take another trip with her in the future!!
