Being taken back to memories of India

We woke up to a bit of a gloomy but no less beautiful view of the lake. After going about our usual morning routine we made the drive into Hamilton to visit Hamilton Gardens. I saw the gardens advertised in a leaflet we had but we weren't prepared for how extensive or elaborate they were. They had gardens created in the style of different countries including Japan, Italy, India and England. We started our walk in the Indian garden and as soon as we entered it brought back so many memories of our time in India. They had even built replica buildings which added to the whole overall image of the country each garden reflected. We got the same wow factor when we entered the Italian garden which had characteristic marble statues and wonderful water features. The British garden was a little sad looking because none of the flowers were in bloom which was a shame and I felt it needed a little TLC and a good weeding. Unless they think all British gardens are mainly made up of weeds! They also had gardens that are yet to open and one of these was a surrealism garden. We could see the treses for it over the fence and they were using netting to help them grow into weird and wonderful shapes. I can imagine it will be like walking through wonderland when it does open. For a free thing to do we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the sun really held out for us which was an added bonus. Apart from that Hamilton didn't really offer anything else we fancied doing. We decided to head to the cinema this afternoon just to escape travelling a bit. This did mean trying to park in the most congested car park in the world but luckily after ten minutes of wondering why anyone would drive a van their whole lives and deal with this daily we found a smaller carpark further away that had lots of empty spaces. We ate rubbish food in the food court and very much enjoyed having a mini break from our campervan. We've began to be a bit concious of time as we now have less than a month until we take our camper back to Christchurch. At the start 3 months seemed like almost too long to explore both islands but it's definitely not enough time at all. We had planned to skip a coastal town we wanted to visit called Raglan but we've been convinced it's worth a trip and with the weather looking good for tomorrow I think we will add it in. I do worry soon we will have to really cut things out but at least we have summer when we could always visit again. Saying that our list for things to do in summer is growing daily and it may end up with us driving all over the place. It's something we plan to organise as soon as we are back on farm so we can book lovely airbnbs and know we will have a little luxury when we travel and always get to enjoy a bed we haven't had to make first. For now we are parked in a car museum carpark listening to the sound of the rain in a beautifully constructed bed ready for a good nights sleep.Read more