Hokkaido in summer with a kid: Part 3 (Lake Toya - Sapporo)

After several rounds of onsen, we unwillingly left Lake Toya to drive up to Sapporo. We stayed at the Okura Hotel, which is rather old but the rooms are spacious with decent pricing. Sapporo is fairly compact and the city centre can be walked, except for the Ishiya Chocolate Factory which requires a subway and 700m of walking after that.

Based on hubby's "go to the furthest point first" philosophy, we headed out to the Ishiya Chocolate Factory after a quick lunch. Don't let the dreary brick exterior deceive you. Walk into it and it's like Alice in Wonderland, with pretty flower gardens, clock tower, flanked mini Tudor-style houses.

Our little one enjoyed the chocolate factory tour (600 yen, with one Shiroi Koibito thrown in), and taking lots of photos.

Kid alert: None. This place is made for kids. There is even a little train that goes around. Try to catch the "chiming on the hour" of the clock, which comes with a little "show" of bubbles and clockwork toys performing on the clock tower. Just make sure the kid doesn't eat too much to avoid a sugar-crazed kid running around.

Thereafter, laden with lots of canned chocolate drinks from Ishiya plus some confectionery, we had to make a pit stop back at the hotel first to offload the goods, before moving out again to see the Clock Tower, TV Tower and old government building.

We also survived a sushi bar with our kid! Thankfully, Hanamaru (at the Tokedai building near the clock tower) had some fishball (made from real fishmeat with very little flour) and vegetable soup and we paired it with sushi rice for our kid... while the adults happily stuffed themselves with fresh sushi.

The bill came up only to 5,000 yen, which was very reasonable for the standard of sushi that we got. Ahhh, the weighing machine groans in pain!

Our complete itinerary:
Day 1: Haneda to Hakodate (overnight in Hakodate)
Day 2: Hakodate - Lake Toya (overnight in Lake Toya)
Day 3: Lake Toya - Sapporo (overnight in Sapporo)
Day 4: Otaru (overnight in Sapporo)
Day 5: Sapporo - Furano (overnight in Furano)
Day 6: Biei (overnight in Furano)
Day 7: Furano - Asahikawa - Tokyo (overnight in Tokyo)
Day 8: Tokyo (overnight in Tokyo)
Day 9: Tokyo - Singapore