kew gardens.

a few weekends ago i decided to explore in london which lead me on a smallish journey to a place called kew gardens. it's at the end of the district line - the green one if you are looking at a tube map - and is basically just a botanical garden. with the weather starting to get nice for spring/summer though i figure might as well spend as much time outside as possible before it becomes impossible to do so.

you get off the tube and you are in a tiny little suburb of london. there is literally one pub, one bookstore, a small cafe, and a small grocery store right near the station. you walk down a tree lined street with amazing houses and end up at the entrance to the gardens.

the place is huge - i was probably there for about 5 hours including lunch and don't think i saw everything. it's a great place to take some food and just sit and relax for the afternoon, except for the fact that it's right in heathrow's flight path so there are a lot of planes going over head.

a few of my favorite shots from the day -

the poor peacock was being chased by children who had clearly never seen a peacock. i think it was turning to me for help.

there is a cool tree top walkway they built that let's you walk around and see the gardens from above.

there were multiple green houses with different "themes". these were taken at the water lilly house.

taken inside another one of the greenhouses. you can climb up the stairs and walk around the top of them, but boy was it hot in there. heat certainly does rise.