Beat This

I am in Wellington. I am bad at blogging. Moving on...

Central Park is, of course, very nice. On one of my last days in New York I walked through part of it, near the reservoir. Though it was late summer, everything was still green and beautiful. The sun was out. There were lots of people lying in the sun or jogging or whatever. You could see skyscrapers peeking over the tops of the trees, which is always one of my favourite things about Central Park-- you can easily imagine you are in the middle of... well, not the country, but a not-quite-city, but then you look up and remember you're in New York. It's pretty awesome.

Also good is the Sydney Botanical garden. It goes right up to the Opera House, and I'm pretty sure you can see the Harbour Bridge from parts of it (one of my favourite things about Sydney is you can see its landmarks-- Opera House, Harbour Bridge, from a lot of places in the city, not just when you're right next to them). There are many plants and trees labeled for your botanic education (which I am planning a blog post on soon), and some of the trees have infestations of flying foxes, which is apparently a bad thing but is pretty cool when you look up and see all these bat-like things in the trees. I mean, provided the stay in the trees. I would not like those to come swooping down on me. Anyway, good garden. In a city. Sweet as. (I am so down with the antipodean lingo)

Even Hong Kong park is pretty nice. It's always fun to walk through on a Saturday and play count-the-wedding-parties... I'm sure everyone in Hong Kong must have the same exact wedding photos. It has an awesome aviary (when it's not closed because of bird flu), and the extra bonus of having an escalator that goes from the park DIRECTLY into a mall. Only in Hong Kong.

But...
On a clear, sunny, crisp day like today, I challenge you to find a city garden/park nicer than the Wellington Botanical Garden. I just went for maybe a half hour walk in it, and it was gorgeous. There are bits that are dark and shady and you don't see or hear anyone else, and bits of open meadow where lots of people (though, you know, in New Zealand "lots of people" is a relative term) are lying out. There is a beautiful rose garden where you can sit and have a cup of coffee and a pretty good lunch, and there are bits of seemingly uncultivated wood with only the slightest path through them. You have to walk up and down hills the entire time, meaning you get some stunning vistas of Wellington harbour and houses nestled on hillsides. As much as I like seeing the skyscrapers from Central Park, it is pretty nice to know that I'm only just outside the centre of Wellington and yet it's all houses, not apartment blocks, and most of what I see is green. And then-- bonus!-- I can walk out the top and either take the cable car down into the middle of the city, or walk five minutes to my flat. Bliss.
The only way I think it could be improved is by having slightly better signage near the Magpie Lawn. I got a bit lost.
I didn't take any pictures today, when I saw the nicest bits I've seen so far, but here's a picture from the top, where the Cable Car comes out, just to give a bit of a feel.