Roses are red, baby blue eyes are, well, blue

Japan celebrated one of the holidays that causes a major human migration -- Golden Week, where combined with PTO and weekends, people can enjoy a 10-day holiday. This means many decide to travel during this time, both domestically and internationally. Airports and popular tourist spots are crowded and traffic is horrendous.

I had no plans to travel since not only is everywhere crowded with tourists, prices get jacked up. I saw on insta that local parks had flowers in bloom, so I decided to visit these parks. One had baby blue eyes in bloom and another had roses. I was kind of surprised at the traffic to the park with the baby blue eyes, but fortunately, I knew the back roads that avoided most of the traffic. I feel sorry for the out-of-towners who get stuck in traffic.

I get to the park and find that the parking lots were almost full. I was scootering, so I didn't have to worry about waiting for a spot to open up. There were a lot of people at the park hauling tents and picnic gear. Well, it is a park where people can spend the whole day, not just enjoying the flowers in bloom but various rides and even soak in a hot spring bath at the end of the day. One of the rides is a zip line and it was entertaining to watch people who get stuck just before the end and dangling over the pond get rescued by the staff. The park has a camping and BBQ site for those staying overnight. People can ride on the little blue choo choo train to get from one end of the park to another. One of the more popular rides is the ferris wheel. The park also just opened an area that displays animated dinosaurs. Why dinos? Your guess is a good as mine. There were a bunch of kites (the bird) flying overhead waiting for the chance to literally swoop in and steal food from the unsuspecting picnickers.

There was a plot where there was a carpet of baby blue eyes and another plot with other flowers blooming as well. It was really nice being out and enjoying the colorful display of flowers (it would've been nicer if there weren't so many people). There were poppies, ranunculus lux, violets, lupine, phlox, daisies, dogwood, hawthorn, yellow iris, and a single sunflower blooming in the park.

I decided to have an early lunch at one of the diners in the park. The food wasn't all that bad. I had sweet and sour chicken with rice and miso soup. The portion was bigger than I expected so I was quite full by the time I finished eating. Getting to the diner early was a good call since there was a long line outside by the time I left the diner. I was planning to stop by the soft serve ice cream shop on the way back, but I was still too full from the heavy lunch, but I had ice cream in the freezer at home, so I didn't go without.

The next time I went out, I started the day by going to a restaurant I like since they were doing a Golden Week pizza special. This restaurant usually only does course meals and not exactly suited for solo dining. I usually just go to the morning market soup stand the chef runs on Sundays. When I saw that they were going to do pizza, I just had to go there for lunch. It's been a minute since they did a pizza special. I decided on the teriyaki chicken pizza, which is actually a popular pizza in Japan. The teriyaki sauce matched well with the cheese and the pizza is topped with Japanese parsley, which is more fragrant than regular parsley and has a refreshing aftertaste. The eat-in set comes with a salad or soup, dessert, and soft drink. The dessert was a delightful parfait with fresh strawberries, homemade custard pudding, vanilla ice cream, and homemade strawberry sauce. My taste buds were very happy.

After lunch, I headed over to the park with roses in bloom. This park wasn't as crowded as the park I went to the other day, but still, there were quite a few people out and about. The roses were gorgeous! They come in so many colors--red, orange, yellow, white, pink, and purple. I really liked the purple ones. There were blooms about the size of quarters to ones bigger than my hand.

I wasn't the only one going down the rows snapping off pics of roses. There were a few serious photographers with elaborate cameras trying to find the perfect angle. And here I am, just shoving my little digital camera in front of the roses I like and snapping off pics. Some of the blooms were downright stunning, like the red rose with a yellow center.

I'm pretty happy with myself that I didn't spend the 5-day weekend being a couch potato the whole time. I did go out and about and spend some time enjoying the warm weather and fresh air.

Have you been out and about lately?

 May 7  

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