The north-west holds Kyoto's two most photographed sights within twenty minutes' walk of each other, and almost everyone does them as a coach stop. Walk it instead, on the temple road that links them, and the gap between the crowds becomes the best part.
Start at Kinkaku-ji the moment the gate opens — the Golden Pavilion on its pond, gold leaf doubled in the water, before the morning fills up. The route through is one-way and quick; take the picture and go. Then the Kinukake-no-michi, the silk-veil road, twenty quiet residential minutes to Ryoan-ji. Sit on the veranda and look at the fifteen stones in their gravel; you can never count all fifteen at once, and that is the whole argument. Drop to the older pond garden below, which the gravel-seekers ignore.
South to Kitano Tenmangu, the shrine of the god of learning, plum trees everywhere and students buying luck before exams. End in Kamishichiken, the oldest geisha district, and pick up the Randen tram at Kitano-Hakubaicho.
