Thursday Dec. 23

We did a TON of walking today! I've never actually lived in Hamilton, my parents moved here while I was over in Hawaii studying, so I don't know this city too well. But my mum told me about the Hamilton Gardens, and we had to see them. Usually when anyone suggests walking at the gardens somewhere my eyes glaze over. But these are so cool!

They're actually 5 different collections of gardens and each is divided into sub-sections. For example, the first is the Paradise Collection, and it's made up of 6 different themes, each representing a different country. They are:

The Chinese Scholars Garden

The English Flower Garden

(yes this IS a turkey!)

The Japanese Garden of Contemplation

The American Modernist Garden

The Italian Renaissance Garden

The Indian Char Bagh Garden (this was my favourite)

(Ka'ihi's looking at me like what the ?)

We also visited the Productive Collection made up of the Kitchen Garden, Sustainable Backyard, Herb Garden, Te Parapara and the Perfume Garden

That took about 2 hours, and there's still so so much more to see! I really loved it, it's such a great family activity. They try to educate people on growing your own gardens and how to be kind to the environment, and get lots of community involved through service, competitions, lectures and productions. We decided to go back one evening and finish the rest, because they also have shows and family activities. Isn't that so cool?

This trip has been a lot of firsts for Ka'ihi too, and one of them was going down the slide! 

I think he liked it ;)