Day 7: Lavande D'Amour, European Garden...

~ 20th March 2014 ~

Welcome to the European Garden....

The best part of being Chinese illiterate is, I need not plan that much or look at the map of the theme park. My international travel buddy has to do all the work and I just walked blindly. I will only use my brain when needed, for example when we get lost. I have better built-in compass in my head. Actually, we both are very good with directions. The Eurepean Garden nestled comfortably on the east side of the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village. It's on the east side from where we were standing. The Amusement Isle was right in the middle of everything. After we got down from the extremely slow kiddy ride, we saw that massive structure of a building. We thought it would just be a small place with nothing much to see. At that point of time, I still have not build up my love for fresh flowers.

The white and purple sheep....

Until you walk in, you would never know. The place was mammoth big. If you were to walk the whole round, the beauty of the whole European Garden would take your breath away. This makes me want to travel to Europe. If the European Garden in a Chinese land could be so beautiful, what about the original ones? The theme for spring season was Lavande D'amour, translated from my poor Italian terms should carry the meaning... Lavender Love. Even those man-made sheep has their coats covered in the purple of lavender.

Roman fountain...

There are a few notable features of the garden which everyone should take note of. Stop taking selfie and miss out the important points in your tour. That's the Roman fountain. I like this piece of photo taken by yours truly. I don't really fancy those stone-build miniature statues, whatever you call them.. It's too eerie to enjoy looking at but I do like that cascading water.

That's Ritz Palace as the backdrop. Pardon my tongue-out photo. For spring season, it's really hot. It's as hot as back home and we were not that comfortable walking around. When you're walking around with the scorching sun burning your head and all over, it also feels like your energy has been sucked out of you right from your pores. We tried to have a quick walk around but you know, it's just too beautiful not to stop at every few steps to freeze everything into a rectangular frame.

That's the Gothic clock tower. It was mind-boggling why I did not walk nearer to get a towering photo of the clock tower. It must be lazy us refused to move to the other side of the gigantic widespread garden. I love those red bushes and I found 'em beautiful red leaves in one of the nurseries and now I'm very tempted to have them in my garden.

There were train tracks but the miniature train was not to be found. It went chugging off into the woods I guess. Thus, we didn't get to ride on the miniature train. It was okay though. It's not like we've never boarded a train before.

This is where I fall in love with plants.... not in a bouquet and definitely not in a vase or worse still, plastic plants. Red and pink are my favourite colours. Trust me, if I have all the time in the world and the sun was not burning my skin, I would spent my time in this garden, doing nothing. Oh, maybe walking around and taking more photos with my travel buddy as the model. She has perfect slim-fit body even after she just swallowed a horse and a cow plus a zebra. 

So, I think this is where I fall head over heels with flowers. I wish my garden is as huge as this then I will hire a few gardeners to turn them into those like what you have in Hong Kong Disneyland, flowers made into Mickey head, and lots more. Maybe I will come out with a theme every few months. Nah, I can't do them all on my own. 

Then, we were getting out of the place already after spending an hour plus there. If only we have more time... if only we have more time.... 

That's the overview of the place in panorama. Hey, it's Lavender Love... aren't you wondering where's the lavender?

There you go... the lavender... and I have to admit that I don't really like them, those Spanish lavender. But the combination of striking colours are really mesmerizing. I ran out of vocabularies to describe the beauty of nature.