Kyoto Imperial Palace Visit

I have just booked our group a tour in English of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. It is basically similar to what we did with the Tokyo Imperial Palace during the last trip but a bit shorter. I suspect that they will have a Japanese speaking guide and we will get headsets and maps that help us to follow along in English. I doubt we will have an attendant like the poor little man that was on the Tokyo tour.

I booked the tour for April 1 at 10 am. We arrive in Kyoto on the last day of March and will have to figure out what we need to do to get to the palace gates at some point during that day so we don't have difficulty with it. Our hotel is supposed to be right in the area where the palace is though so I am hoping we can just walk to it without issue. The tour is one hour long and we need to be there 10 minutes early (The Japanese are very much sticklers for time).

The website is basically the same as it was back in 2007 but they updated the pages and the initial link is now broken. The new link can be located here. There are links for both of the Imperial Palaces as well as a couple other Imperial Villas and the Sento Imperial Palace which I will have to do research on for another trip.

I think this could be a good highlight of the Kyoto stretch of our stay. I would be most happy if the compound has cherry blossoms in full bloom while we are there.