When we visited Sapporo in 2016 we stayed at the Cross Hotel and we liked it. So 8 years later we booked a deluxe suite for 4 nights there ($336.32 per day, including breakfast). It was cramped and we didn't like it at all in 2024. We think that in the last 8 years, we have stayed at too many Four Seasons hotels to go back to a 4-star hotel. During our stay, the Cross Hotel did not grow on us either.
We ate uni and crab when we were last in Sapporo and we did so again on this trip, very happily.
Dimitri savoring uni at Kita no Ryoba, a small restaurant at the back of a fish shop at Jōgai Ichiba, Sapporo's Central Wholesale Market
We ate uni as one of the items of a set menu at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel and it was great. We ate a whole hairy crab on a set menu in an upscale restaurant and enjoyed it. Another night we had 4 humongous oysters on the half-shell that were spectacularly good (and typically we don't like big oysters). We ate surf clams sashimi-style and they were very good too. The salmon roe bowl was a hit with us too.
Walking around Sapporo was tough because of the cold wind whipping around the buildings and into our faces. The sidewalks were sometimes cleared and sometimes not. The roads were packed snow and very icy when we had to cross. The cars must have had good snow tires because they zoomed around on the ice. The underground walkways never seemed to go where we were going.
We had two days of sun and then a third day that was a blizzard. Dimitri didn't want to go out but we had to. He had an abscess with pus on his middle right finger. It took 1 1/2 hours on the phone with the volunteer medical interpreter to find a doctor to see Dimitri. After a few false starts, she found the correct doctor: a general surgeon who would open the wound, drain it, clean it, and dress it. Finding that surgeon's clinic was another huge challenge. It was in the main train station's JR Office Tower. We would never have gotten there before the clinic closed if it weren't for an information counter that we found. We skidded in at 5 pm--one-half hour before the clinic closed. The surgeon spoke enough English; we had fudicia. We were out by 5:40 pm. Dimitri was on his way to a recovery for around US $71.
On our last day in Sapporo, we went to the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art. We didn't go in because we didn't like the exhibits. After that, we went to a huge Ario supermarket to buy provisions for our stay in Niseko.
All of the snow fell in Sapporo; unfortunately. The snow did not make it to Niseko.
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