Hyrule Castle City Travel Guide
By Tull Ifith
Hyrule Castle City is not the nation's capital for nothing: it booms with progress, diversity, business, industry, arts, and history. Older than the Era of Time, and at the same time, always a couple of steps ahead of the rest of the country, its draw is magnetic. The city has a long history of trade and travelers, and its population is always growing. People come, every day and from every province in the nation, and some of them always end up staying.
Transportation and Accessibility
Once within the city, it is far easier to make use of its public transport system than to drive and try to find parking. Ticket stations can be found at all bus and tunnel stations, and choosing the "Visitation Pass" option allows you to select the length of your stay and pay your ticket fare beforehand. Passes will work on the tunnel and the buses. You can also take a taxi, but this can quickly get expensive. For Rito, standard two-lane flight patterns are the norm, and interfering with the flow of other traffic, aerial or otherwise, will be met with a heavy fine. All air-accessible venues have entrances for those without flight. For Zora, the city has numerous rehydration fountains and showers available for free. These are constantly being filtered and cleaned, and many higher-profile fountains will have a city employee there to ensure the water isn't messed with or contaminated.
Lodging
Castle City is peppered with hotels and inns, although cheap rooms get snapped up fast! If you have the time to plan ahead, book your rooms as soon as possible. It's always worth it to get a room nearer to the places of interest you want to visit, but again, the good ones go fast.
Things To Do
The two most frequented areas of Castle City when it comes to tourism are its Arts District and Old Castle Town.
The Arts District is home to Theater Row, tens of restaurants ranging from upscale to down-home, Daphnes Park, and the National Hyrulean Art Gallery. There are plenty of other museums, natural, artistic, and historical, to visit, and most of them offer discounts for seniors and youths under 18, as well as to university students of any age, and are generally very affordable. Productions on Theater Row are the best in the nation, but prior reservation of tickets is required and it can make for a very pricey outing. My personal suggestion? Get lunch from a food cart, find a nice spot in Daphnes Park, and have yourself a picnic. I've lived here my whole life, and I still try to do this once a week. Keep your eye out for street performers, who put on impressive impromptu shows!
Old Castle Town is located smack-dab in the center of Castle City, surrounded by a stone wall that was once the limits of the city. The buildings in this area are protected and therefore, aside from refurbishment and additions to bring the old architecture up to safety codes, are unchanged from how they were in the time of Queen Zelda I. The tunnel system doesn't reach this part of the city, as the construction process would have disrupted the buildings, but you can still take the bus, and Old Castle Town is only a ten-minute walk from the Arts District. Walk the charming campus of Castle City University, take one of the guided historical tours that start every fifteen minutes, catch a mass at the Temple of Time, and of course, get a look at Hyrule Castle itself. The Castle is only open to public visitation on major holidays, but to be entirely honest, it feels like the entire nation shows up to try and get in, so I wouldn't recommend timing your trip for one of these events. The castle is just as majestic from the outside!
The other areas of the city, like the Financial District, may perhaps be of interest to those planning a longer stay. I would suggest visiting the National Bank, Monument Hill, or the Zoman Tower, currently the tallest building on the Castle City skyline.
Enjoy your trip to the big city!
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