Apart from visiting the A Dome and the Peace Memorial Park, our other reason for visiting Hiroshima was to take a boat trip to Miyajima Island to see the deer and the orange gate of Itsukushima Jinja which appears to float on the water.

We left the hotel quite early as we had a one hour train ride to reach the ferry port. After that it was a very short ferry crossing to reach the island where we actually sailed past the orange gate.

^{Views of Miyajima Island and the orange gate from the ferry.}

Within 5 minutes of leaving the boat we spotted our first deer wandering along the street – so of course we followed it!

^{Deer on Miyajima Island – they were very friemdly!}

We walked along the seafront and headed to Itsukushima Jinga – a 16th century Shinto shrine. There was a massive queue of people waiting to take photos in front of the shrine. We were happy to take our photos 200 meters away which meant there was no queue or audience!

^{The orange gate of the Itsukushima Jinga.}

We then went around the shrine. There was a little shop inside selling souvenirs so Izzy bought herself a good luck charm as she was awaiting her GCSE results in a few weeks.

^{Inside Itsukushima Jinga}

We headed back to the main shopping street where we found a Starbucks so ordered some drinks and snacks and then wandered around a few of the shops before catching a return ferry back to the mainland.

^{The main shopping street}

We returned to the hotel to use the pool facilities and later that evening Stu and I left the kids behind and took a bus to Hiroshima Castle. We ended up boarding the wrong bus so had to get off and start again. We went for a wander around the castle which was beautiful all lit up before heading back.

^{Hiroshima Castle at night.}