RIHGA Royal Hotel Kyoto

This was our final hotel as part of the 12 day trip through Japan with Gate1 Travel/Discovery Small Groups and it was yet another really great hotel - it was nice to conclude the trip at a place like this. Very clean, very well organized, good walking distance to a lot of great restaurant and even attractions (we walked 2 days in a row back from first Nishiki Market about 45 minutes, and second day from Gion about 50 minutes or so) - there are some nice big temples within super short walk as well. The hotel provides a bottle that you can refill at the hallway of each floor - which is a very nice feature so you don't have to buy any water bottles and not be concerned about the tap water. Our room was nice, and we had a "sunset view" though the view wasn't the prettiest of the rest - did not really matter as we never stayed in the room. You can hear some trains as it's literally next to rail tracks (walking distance to the Rail Museum - we didn't have time to go so I can't comment on it) but it didn't bother as as back home we have much louder cargo trains pass our area by all the time but I can see how it can be a factor for some light sleepers. The buffet restaurant opens up at 6:30AM so it's a helpful thing if you are still dealing with a jet lag - people line up but they get accommodated really fast as the team here is very efficient at it. The area with food isn't too big so it gets a bit crowded and people bump into each other a lot unfortunately. The food options weren't as great as at other hotels we stayed at but one could always find something - though to be perfectly honest we missed the final breakfast due to an early departure and I actually did not mind - it wasn't bad but many Japanese options were just not interesting compared to other hotels and we struggled to find here something to be very excited about as we have at the other places - but this is just a personal taste so for others it may be just great. Espresso machine was available so having a morning late was always a welcome thing at least :) The biggest asset of this hotel is its team, the human factor! They were very nice helping us organize the taxi from the hotel to Itami Airport since we couldn't take advantage of the hotel shuttle due to how early we were heading to the airport. It was just about $115 USD for the about 45 - 50 minute ride around 4AM so a very reasonable rate which I highly recommend (Kansai airport is much much further away so this may be much higher) - keep in mind the airport does not open until 5:30AM (I wish we knew as we would not have left at 4AM) so no matter how early your flight is don't arrive any earlier as you will have to sit outside the airport (our driver was nice enough to let us stay until 5AM inside his car and then we stood outside for the last 30minutes). A really nice hotel, despite not being crazy about the breakfast options I would return without hesitation - we loved exploring Kyoto on foot from here every day we had some extra time after our daily pre-arranged tour.