#610 The Smallest Ginkgo Tree in Argentina

We often visit Japanese gardens when we travel.

We find the Japanese garden in Buenos Aires to be a calm oasis bordered by a 12-lane one-way street.

 

Plopped in the middle of all this "urban", two aspects of this garden stand out.  First is the large expanse of water.

And second is the abundance of large stones.

 

Often the stones are coupled with water.

The water and stones overshadow the plant specimens in this garden with one clear exception. 

I smile when I find what must be Argentina's smallest ginkgo (my favorite tree) in the garden's bonsai exhibit. 

Yours in keeping an eye out for the little things,
Kelly

#600 Kirstenbosch - most beautiful garden in the world

After the excitement of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s visit, we now return to our regularly scheduled blogging. 

When last we visited Kirstenbosch in 2011, we proclaimed it to be the most beautiful garden in Africa.  We must have been short-sighted.  It is certainly the most beautiful garden in all the world. 

On a sparkling spring day in Cape Town, we dock early, clear immigration, and walk straight to the Pick-n-Pay at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront that we remember from our previous visit.  With picnic ingredients stuffed in our backpack, we hop on the hop-on-hop-off bus (the blue route), savor the front row seats on the upper deck, and make our way around to the opposite side of Table Mountain to the Kirstenbosch National BotanicalGarden.

The 89-acre garden within a 1300-acre nature preserve enjoys a striking setting against Table Mountain full of birds of paradise, orange pincushions, and the king proteas.  Four hours of strolling are not enough.  Magnificent!

 

Yours in enjoying the majesty of Kirstenbosch,

Mary

#545 Vacation Virginia #6 - Blandy Farm

On UVA finals weekend when Charlottesville welcomes 35,000 out-of-town guests, we drive north two hours to the Winchester area for Vacation Virginia #6.  When we veer away from the commercial corridor that is highway 29 onto the lovely highway 231 paralleling the Blue Ridge, the scene shifts.  So many rolling hills, clear streams, inviting driveways, and often a view of the mountains make us think this may be the prettiest drive in Virginia.  But then we remember Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and all the other beautiful Virginia drives!

Our first destination is the State Arboretum of Virginia, UVA's Blandy Experimental Farm.   We give the secret librarian handshake and quick as a wink, we're inside the Blandy library.  

As cool as libraries are, we're really here to see the Ginkgo Grove.  The 300-tree ginkgo grove is the largest such grove in North America.  Seeds collected in 1929 from a single mother tree on UVA grounds were planted at the Blandy Farm and 300 of those seeds grew to maturity.  We enjoy the privilege of walking under the ginkgo canopy more than 80 years on. 

The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley is definitely a Michael Graves building.  Upstairs, the main gallery is topped by a stylized timber structure suggestive of a Shenandoah Valley barn.  I quickly remember another Graves-designed ceiling, the barrel vaults at the NCAA office.  Mr. Graves likes for us to look up.

Six acres of gardens surround the museum. We find the Chinese garden unexpectedly impressive.  Moss, stone, water, bamboo, and Koi are expertly stitched into this nearly hidden, serene, and superb Shenandoah landscape.

Our fun day ends with another drive-in movie, Star Trek Into Darkness at the Family Drive-In in Stephens City.  While Bengie's Drive-In had boasted of the largest screen in the country, the Family Drive-In boasts of being the only 2-screen drive-in theater in Virginia (and perhaps one of the smallest screens.)  The theater guy and UDITOA report 9 drive-in theaters are still operating in Virginia, but I can only find 8 (Christiansburg, Goochland, Keysville, Lexington, Marion, Moneta, Norton, Stephens City).  Does anyone know the 9th?

 

Yours in enjoying a weekend escape from the hustle and bustle of Charlottesville,

Mary

#544 Vacation Virginia #5 - Maymont

Richmond is only an hour east of Charlottesville, but we haven't made time for much exploring there, until Vacation Virginia #5.

Our goal: tour the Maymont house and walk their renowned Japanese garden.  On May 11, the day before Mother's Day, the grounds of Maymont are crowded with families when we arrive with our Richmond friend Sara.  But our tour guide Wendy manages our group well and introduces us to the Dooley family who built the house in 1893 and lived it in for 30 years.  We feel we have known the Dooleys for a while since we have often visited Swannanoa, their summer home (or mountain retreat) at the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Maymont house is a complete example of the Gilded Age as it was bequeathed directly from the Dooleys to the city of Richmond and preserved.  The clutter is almost overwhelming, but we like the dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows, the wide wood trim, the inviting library, the elaborate stained glass windows, and the numerous connections to Swannanoa.  The downstairs exhibits of the servants' lives bring Downton Abbey to mind.

Down a steep hill, past a natural waterfall over large stones and almost to the James River, we enter through a gate to the beautiful Japanese garden.

We end our day with a visit to the University of Richmond's International Center where Kelly enjoys the spectacular globe fountain.  Yes, he's pointing out the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian just south of Ghana. 

Yours in finally hitting some of Richmond's highlights,
Mary

#508 Hilo's Japanese Garden

What a way to spend the last afternoon of the last day in our last port! 

We visited Hilo's fantastic Liliuokalani Japanese Garden.

This sprawling thirty-acre city park makes most of the gardens we've already visited on this trip seem like postage stamps. 

Liliuokalani's central pond is a tidal pool alive with exotropical fish and guarded by a massive Banyan tree. 

Maybe we saved one of the best places for last.

Yours in enjoying Japanese gardens everywhere,
Kelly

#497 Taipei Day of Fun

One of the world's best museums of Chinese art, The National Palace Museum, lured us to Taipei, just a short bus ride from our port in Keelung, Taiwan. We'll post more about our museum visit soon, but just to ease your minds, yes, we saw the famous meat-shaped stone.

After the museum, Mary and I made a day of it in Taipei.  Long walks took us through city parks like Shuangxi that looked like postcards. 

The excellent subway system whisked us to the National Central Library .

The librarians have this OK view across the street toward the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.

We wrapped up our Taipei Day of Fun with a stroll through the lush Taipei botanic garden.

Yours in doing our best to find all the best places,
Kelly
  

#493 Suzhou gardens

More subtle than Shanghai are the gardens of Suzhou, about two hours west of Shanghai.   Suzhou has been around since 514 BCE.  Located on the Grand Canal, Suzhou is noted for its classical gardens and known as the Venice of the East.  The classical gardens are recognized on the UNESCO world heritage list.

A Chinese garden needs Chinese architecture, rocks, water, and plants.  And Kelly believes every Chinese garden must include a gingko tree.

We visit first the Humble Administrator's Garden.

The Master of the Nets garden is the smallest garden in Suzhou and is reproduced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.  And it has a library!

The Lingering Garden is our third garden visit.

Yours in enjoying the subtleties of Chinese gardens,
Mary

#490 Looking Down on Hong Kong

If you want to look down on Hong Kong, you climb Victoria Peak.

Our views on the tram ride to the top make the steep incline very clear.

Hong Kong seems to be all about the shopping.  We avoid the multi-level mall at the top, but the view from the coffee shop is hard to resist.

Drizzly weather hampers the panormic vista, but the MV Explorer really is docked way down there in the fog.

The cool weather inspires us to walk all the way back down to Hong Kong and we make sure to trek through the botanic garden we loved back in 2006.  Still no gingko, but the fountain has seen a facelift and the bamboo garden remains strong.

Yours in enjoying the ups and downs of Hong Kong,
Kelly

#483 No Singapore Sling

What to do with only one day in Singapore?

Many of our shipboard companions head off to Raffles Hotel to sample the Singapore Sling where it was first concocted. The Sling's "original recipe used original recipe used gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice, primarily from Sarawak pineapples which enhance the flavour and create a foamy top."

But not us. On tap for us are the National Orchid Garden, the National Library of Singapore, and the Kinokuniya Bookstore. What a fabulous day!

First, we stop by to see the magnificent orchids at the National Orchid Garden.

Then after lunch at the Maxwell Food Centre, we walk all the way from Chinatown to the National Library of Singapore, admiring Singapore's architectural wonders along the way. 

The architectural wonder of the 16-story National Library of Singapore fits right in.

Our shipboard novelist P. F. Kluge recommends Kinokuniya Bookstore as the world's greatest bookstore.  And it does not disappoint.  See that shopping bag?

Yours in loving our brief stop in Singapore,

Mary

#470 Africa's Most Beautiful Garden

Take an immaculately tended botanic garden in a unique climate zone supporting one of Earth's most diverse plant populations and squeeze the garden against Cape Town's Table Mountain backdrop.

This is Kirstenbosch Garden donated to the people of South Africa by Cecil Rhodes, the funder of the Rhodes Scholarships.

Our botanic day of fun began with a walk through the Stone Pines.

The succulant garden was other-worldly.

Cycads were dinosaur food.

Kirstenbosch grows acres of cycads.

But a highlight for me was the familiar tree nestled among the cycads that seems to grow everywhere we've lived and everywhere we travel, ginkgo biloba.

Yours in finding a familiar face in a strange crowd,
Kelly