Traveling with dailydelicious: Hokkaido day three, our trip on the road.

Sweet Potato (スイートポテト), from Cranberry (クランベリ)

And today, we would leave Obihiro. But before going, I still had 2 missions that I had to complete.

If you want to read previous post click here:
Traveling with dailydelicious: Hokkaido day one, Happy brunch with Doraemon, and nobody (else) train
Traveling with dailydelicious: Hokkaido day two, Eating, and non stop eating in and around Obihiro

 First, I wanted to eat famous Sweet Potato (スイートポテト), from Cranberry (クランベリー本店)

クランベリー 6 Chome Nishi 2 Jōminami, Obihiro-shi, Hokkaidō 080-0012  +81 155-22-6656

Cranberry established in 1972, and its Sweet Potato (スイートポテト) is a must, if you come to Obihiro ^^.

You can buy it whole piece, (the price will depend on the weigh), or you can eat in (better choice for me), by ordering Sweet Potato set (480 yen) with drink.

Beside from the sweet potato, there were a lot of sweet that we really wanted to try.
As we came here in the morning, and decided to have sweet for our breakfast.
So, 3 of us, ordered 2 Cake set with drink (450yen), 1 sweet potato set, and another piece of cake, hehe.

 カンヌベルシュフロマージュ(Cranberry with Fromage blanc) 281yen

 Cranberry's Mont blanc (クランベリーのモンブラン) 205yen

and Strawberry Millefeuille (苺のミルフィーユ) 216yen
Every were delicious, esp the Sweet Potato, it's so smooth, not to sweet, and after eating the first piece you will want to eat it again!!!!!

There were baked sweet in beautiful boxes, that I really wanted to try them (again!!!!), but we still had many food that we bought yesterday, so we walked back to the hotel (this shop was very close to our hotel), to get the car, and moved on to our next destination.

 Our next stop was 高橋まんじゅう屋 (Takahashi Manju)
〒080-0801 Hokkaidō, Obihiro-shi, 東１条南５丁目１９−4
+81 155-23-1421
It's only 2-3 minutes drive from the hotel.

 Yesterday, I asked the staff at Isakaya, about this shop and she said that it's not that good ^^", but I think I had to try by myself before making decision.

The must have from this shop is Obanyaki (大判焼き 120yen). There were 2 kinds of filling (cheese and red bean), and we wanted to try both of them. Because we went there very early, we didn't have to wait.

 After getting our Obanyaki, we walked back to the car, and saw many people who came to buy Obanyaki, ate it immediately in their car, so we're hurry to do the same, haha.

And yes, there was the reason why you had to enjoy it while it's still warm, because it's the most delicious stage of it! Esp. the cheese one, its warm, melty, lightly salty taste and very, very delicious.

But the red bean was too sweet for my taste ^^, so I recommend buying the cheese one, and you will fall in love with Takahashi Manju's Obanyaki.

After having a load of sweet in the morning, we're ready to go, the scenery from both side of the road were beautiful, it's a shame that I couldn't show you the same view.

 Today, it's raining all day ^^, and some time the snow's falling. 2 hours in the car was not boring because we saw different view all the time.

Finally, we reached the Mikuni Pass (三国峠), actually my goal was to take a photo of the famous Mikuni Pass (三国峠) but because of the rain and snow, we couldn't see anything, -*-.

But the snow was beautiful too, and I was happy with what we saw.

 And now, it's time for our lunch, we had a plan to eat at Mikuni Cafe (三国峠café)
(+81 1564-2-4291), the cafe in Mikuni pass.

 When the weather was cold, the thing that we wanted most was hot drink.

 Inside of the cafe was warm and cute.

 We sit and waiting for the staff.

 My sister order hot tea 600yen.

 While my niece ordered hot cocoa (600yen), and the art was very cute.

 For me, yes you can tell, haha, big cup of Latte 580yen, and my cup came with very lovely bear Latte art too.

After enjoying our drinks, it's time for the food.
There were 5 kinds of curry with rice (カレーライス) to choose from, and all of them sounded good to me ^^.
My sister ordered croquette curry (コロッケカレー 950yen)

 While my niece and I ordered Curry with 5 kinds of sausage (5種のソーセージカレー 1200yen).
With only curry rice on the Menu, you can be sure that the curry was delicious enough to be the main food for the cafe.

We loved the curry rice very much, and after finishing our lunch, I enjoyed buying hand made jewelry and crafts that some of them sold only here.

 Actually I wanted to buy more, haha, but sometime, we had to limit ourself (esp. while traveling), haha.

The Master of the cafe was very nice, he gave each of us very cute postcards that sold in the cafe for free with a load of smile on his face, he made me wanted to come back here again, and yes, I will.

 We spent time playing snow and taking photo, it's beautiful, so beautiful that I tried to keep the memory by taking a photo.

But when I saw the photo, I had to say that I couldn't bring you the beauty of this place the way that I wanted to.

Maybe the feeling that I had was not only from the view, it's the people that we met and the warmth that they gave us that made this place special to me.

There were a couple made this small snow sculpture so I asked them for their permission to take a photo of it ^^.

 Now, we're ready to go, rain and snow were still waiting for us.

 The weather was not good for sight seeing, but we're still keeping our plan. We went to Mt.Kurodake 大雪山層雲峡・黒岳ロープウェイ(Daisetsuzan Sounkyo · Kurodake Ropeway).

 As it's raining and snowing so the visibility was very poor -*-.
We rarely saw anything far.

 But it had its own beauty, that we couldn't get when the weather was good, right?

 We walked along the way and I took photos all the time, haha.

From many photos that I took, this one is the one that I like most. It makes me feel lonely and happy at the same time.

 Because of the rain, some of the snow was melting, so the scenery was not as white as I expected.

We spent about 1 hour here, and liked always, I enjoyed taking photo of everything.

Because the sun would set at 4 (-4.30 pm.), it's getting dark soon.

So, we decided to drive to Asahika without visiting more places.

I think that I will come to Kurodake again, well may be next summer ^^.

Getting in the car, we started our 1.20 hours drive from the Kurodake to Asahikawa.
And we still had a problem with our Navi, -*-.
Because the hotel that we booked (Route-Inn Grand Asahikawa Ekimae  (ホテルルートイングランド旭川駅前)) was new, and it's not registered in the navigation system yet. When we searched we found only the Route-Inn Hotel, after a bit of confusing we followed the way to Route-Inn Hotel without knowing that it's a wrong hotel.
After long and dark driving (there's nothing to see now, so it's boring, haha), we arrived at Route-Inn Hotel to find out that it's not the one.
As I told you that we met many, many good and nice people, one of Route-Inn Hotel's staff was the person that I won't forget him ^^.
When I went to the check in counter, the counter staff explained the direction but it's quite confusing (may be I was very tired), and here my Hero came.
He walked to me and said that he would guide us to the new hotel, and at first we thought that we would sit with us in the car. But we walked back into the parking lot, and rode his bicycle! So we followed his bicycle to the hotel, and he helped taking care of the suitcases (we had to park the car in the automatic car park so we had to get everything out of the car and it's a LOT!)
He's so nice that I couldn't stop saying Thank you to him ^^.

And now, we could rest.
 If you go to Asahikawa, I really recommended this place, not only that the staffs were nice, the room was large, and it's close to Asahikawa station and Aeon mall too.
Route-Inn Grand Asahikawa Ekimae  (ホテルルートイングランド旭川駅前)
+81 50-5847-7720
route-inn.co.jp
 〒070-0030 Hokkaidō, Asahikawa-shi, Miyashitadōri, 8 Chome, 1962-1

We get 4 beds room ^^.

After resting for a while, it's time for our dinner.

We walked to Baikouken (梅光軒 旭川本店), a ramen shop that not far from the hotel.

In this trip, I didn't know why we always ordered food for 4 people every times, haha.

We ordered
1. Shoyu Ramen (醤油ラーメン1050 yen)
2. Miso Ramen (味噌ラーメン1050 yen)
3. Salt Ramen (塩ラーメン 1050 yen)
4. Rice with Onsen egg and stir fried pork (温玉そぼろ丼 350 yen)

I knew that we are greedy, haha, because you can ordered half size ramen for 900 yen, but we chose the normal one.

温玉そぼろ丼

Yes, the ramen was delicious but it's too much for us to finish all of them so now I learnt that if you're not very, very, very hungry, the half size was a better choice.

Tomorrow we would go Biei (美瑛町), to see the blue pond, flower garden and waterfall. Before showing you the photos on next post, I had to tell you that they're very beautiful even the weather was not good at all!!

Traveling with dailydelicious: Hokkaido day four, beautiful view in the rain.