Grand Terrace Hotel Chitose

Remember that post about Wakayama in June 2018? Doesn't the above photo reminds you of it? Well, it's my welcome drink to Hokkaido! Or to be more accurate, to Chitose cause we arrived at night and I didn't want to take any chances getting to our hotel in pitch dark winter. So I booked us a hotel near the airport for just one night, and the airport has a free shuttle bus that picks us up and transfer us directly to the hotel! So Chitose Grand Terrace Hotel was our very first stop of the trip, and above is our self bought welcome drink!

Above is the photo of our hotel and the small shuttle bus. As you can see, it is covered in snow. This is probably my 1st real full blown experience of a winter wonderland. I have seen snow before, once in Tokyo (flurry), and once in Korea. But never have I seen so much snow as I did in my trip to Hokkaido!

So this is what the plants look like all covered in know. And as you can see, it looks like quite heavy load too! We later found out that it was the heaviest snowfall in Hokkaido since the last 50 years or something. There was even a fight that broke out in the airport due to cancellation of flights! So much drama! But this was our holiday, and we enjoyed every bit of it!

So while checking into the hotel, which is quite huge, there were view looking out into the winter garden. This was my very first time seeing such a scene, so I took the above photo on my way to our room. 

Above is what the hotel garden looks like. Since it's December and near Christmas, I guess they decorated the plants to make it look festive or something. I must say, it all looked rather peaceful and beautiful. And so here starts the beginning of our winter wonderland trip in Hokkaido. Please note the sequence of event may be jumbled up a bit cause although I do have an itinerary, but due to snow storms and all, public transport was disrupted here and there and we had to change along the way.

And before I end this post, I would like to share my very first foot print on the snow! My foot print look kinda like a bear eh? Lol.

Ref:

Grand Terrace Hotel Chitose