Alrighty! I managed to find some time to actually hammer this post out since I have horrible shiny syndrome and have been a little preoccupied with various things. So, here we go!
Eric had some time off from work, so we ended up using one of the days to check out the local Japanese garden over in Hasselt. I've been meaning to go for the longest time, but of course, I kept procrastinating because I'd usually forget about it. If you don't know me, I'm rather flighty. If you know me, thank you for your patience! During the Spring, it's completely covered in Cherry Blossoms..so I'm a little sad I missed out on that, but, the garden itself is absolutely gorgeous!
This happens to be their 20th year, so of course their brochures & tickets reflect not only the occasion, but some Japanese style water paintings of the cherry blossoms. Simple., but pretty!
We got there right at opening to ensure that we avoided some of the tourist traffic. I mean, I don't *really* know how busy the place gets during the day, especially in the middle of the week, but I didn't wanna risk having to deal with people wondering into the middle of a shot, know what I mean?
The parking lot has a bunch of Willows (by far my favorite type of tree), so of course I had to get a picture of one of 'em. Eric on the other hand was teasing me about how they're evil tree's since they're the "best" to use when applying the Southern term for "rule of thumb" or "pick your switch". I suppose they're called "Weeping" Willows for a reason. Creepy phrase for such a pretty tree!
Right when you walk into the park after buying your ticket, you instantly see the beautiful landscaping. It instantly gave me a "calm" sort of feeling, that's for sure.
Oh yeah, and when you buy your ticket, you can actually buy fish food for the Koi fish they have throughout the garden. They're EVERYWHERE. Eric was a total kid about tossing the food out to them so they'd all bunch up in front of us. The first pond area you see has little Koi (I'm assuming they're separated from the larger ones because they're so young)..and the further you get into the garden area, the bigger they get.
When I say Eric was like a big kid, I mean..he was literally like a kid getting all excited to toss food to the fish. It was pretty hilarious! The surprising part was to see how close the Koi were getting to us. If you click on the pic below, it'll enlarge so you can see how close they were getting to the cobblestone and within very shallow water.
There was this seating area towards the back of the garden that was VERY cool! I mean, it's tables and what not..so no biggy there, but it was the way the tree's wrapped up the thatching that was the cool part.
Every where you walked was picturesque! I was definitely loving it, especially since there wasn't a massive horde of tourists running around or anything.
I thought this was rather cool. They have bamboo frames set up on some of the bonsai /cypress trees in order to train them to grow a certain way.
They have what I'm guessing is a traditional style Japanese home that you can check out. As you can see, one size does not fit all in terms of height clearance. It doesn't really pay to be 6'3"..luckily for me, I'm only 5'7" and could walk in without worrying about bashing my head on anything. I could only imagine how interesting things could get if we happened to ever get stationed in Japan, lol
Again, more picturesque areas throughout the garden area.
The waterfall was really cool! Once you're done walking around the main part of the garden area (it's a huge loop), you end up coming back to the waterfall and you're able to use the stones as a path to go directly in front of it.
Eric was really diggin' it because the second he made his way near the water, it's like the Koi fish had sent out a bulletin notifying everyone else "HEY! This guy feeds you!!"...they rushed up to him, NOT ME, and started bunching up in order to get goodies from him.
It must be a "guy thing" when it comes to fish or something. At least my guy wasn't the only one trying to play with them!
Eric was absolutely IN LOVE with this little fatty! He lovingly referred to him as "Cole's Cousin" since Cole is a bit of a butterball..and this fish had the same sort of "hungry hungry hippo" logic when it came to eating the fish food Eric kept tossing him.
Eric was trying to coach me into putting a bunch of water in my purse in order to smuggle the fatty fish home. Didn't work.
Oh, and beware of the ravens. This guy pooped on Eric...yes, pooped. He came back to review his handy work and proceeded to laugh at Eric's misfortune.
All in all, it was a very relaxing time to hang out there, check out the scenery and be somewhere other than a movie theater, or plopped in front of the laptop / tv in order to spend time together. I'd definitely recommend going there..I'm curious as to how it'll look in the Fall / Winter time!
