July 28, 2019

I spent the whole day today at Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens. They were so beautiful! The space is huge (I think they said something like 240 acres!), so not all of it is gardens per se, but rather most of it is their arboretum. They had a special Chihuly installation, which was really cool to see in a space other than the Chihuly Museum in Seattle. I spent a good four or five hours wandering around just because it was so beautiful, and then made the hour and a half trek back home. After that I didn't do much else; I went shopping for some groceries to get me through this week and then worked on my reflection for the Honors Netherlands program. I'm hoping to finish that up tomorrow and then start on my research paper for King's! Tomorrow should also be exciting because my Jack the Ripper tour is scheduled for tomorrow night. That's pretty much all for today, but I'm going to add a lot of pictures from the gardens because they were just so pretty!

This picture (left) is from a cool attraction they have where you can walk up a bunch of stairs and walk around at the level of the treetops!

These stairs (right) are in the temperate house, where you can walk up a level to view the gardens from above! They have one staircase for people going up and one for people coming down.

This picture (left) was taken when I was on the second level in the temperate house. The large blue thing hanging from the ceiling is a Chihuly installation!

This is the Palm House, which holds their more tropical plants. I didn't actually go in because it was SO hot, but I thought it was really pretty!

This garden (left) was right outside the Palm House and caught my attention!