Day Trip to Farm Tomita and Hill Town BIei

Arguably, visiting Furano is quite tricky and confusing if you intend to use public transport. So, the wife and I have decided to book online a family day trip through Chuo Bus.

The meeting point is at 2nd floor of ESTA building at least 15 min before the actual tour; since we have visited a couple of times BIC Camera shop inside this building during our previous toy hunts we easily found the place. Just to add, when you receive your tour voucher, the direction to the meeting point is clearly stated.

Tour Group L-1, Bus 2, Seat 27 ( 9AM )

 

We presented our voucher at Chuo Bus tour counter - it opens at exactly 7:30AM while our tour starts at 9AM - and received our tour tickets indicating the "group tour number," bus and seat number too. We waited for the staff to announce our "group number" while holding a big signboard.

We proceeded to the ground floor where our bus was waiting. The bus is big and comfortable, there is also free Wi-Fi on-board. However, there is no multilingual guide and no headsets provided for another language so we just enjoyed the sceneries.

First Stop - 15 min break

Mini Park at Prince Hotel

Wooden House at Prince Hotel

We had a 15 min toilet break in a "wooden barn" along the way. Soon afterwards, at around 11:30 AM we had another stop over at Furano Grape Farm. It wasn't grape season yet so we never saw any single grape on the vineyard. Our bus left after 20 minutes; the tour guide distributed discount vouchers for different attractions at Prince Hotel

We arrived at Prince Hotel at almost 12:30 AM. We had buffet lunch; the hotel offers wide variety of dishes and desserts. Don't hurry since the dining area is quite huge, you would never run out of food and place, just coordinate with your tour guide. After dining, we loitered around the hotel. There is a nice mini-park at the back of the hotel. We didn't bother to avail the ropeway since our bus would leave at 1:50 PM.

The Lavender Plants

We arrived at Farm Tomita at 2:15 PM. Unfortunately, not all flowers are in full bloom yet but nevertheless the entire place is beautiful and the lavender shrubs look pretty awesome. There are several types of flowers cultivated in the area. It was the first time the family has seen this kind of greenery. The ladies immediately started taking their IG shots. We tried their lavender flavored ice cream but the kids didn't like it, LOL. After an hour our group left the place.

Hill Town at Biei

Arrived at Hill Town of Biei at 3:40 PM. We paid 500 Yen each for a ride at Tractor drawn carriage. We have only 35 min here so we opted to take this ride rather than spend our time walking around the massive place. The same situation here, most flowers were not yet in full bloom.

Left the place at 4:15 PM for Sapporo. We had a short stop over at one of the tiny malls in the middle of nowhere. We disembarked near the Sapporo TV Tower and took our dinner at Tanukikoji shopping arcade.

All told, I am sure the place is pretty awesome when all the flowers are in full bloom. We visited the place on the last week of June. Even so, there were already plenty of tourists in the area.