Category: Urban Essays

A good day for an outing

On Sunday, the 21st, I found it was a free admission day at Umi-no-nakamichi Seaside Park, so we decided to go.
We hadn’t been there for five years? Or more?
We don’t have a car, so at first we had to find out about public transportation.
We had a choice of bus + ship, bus + bus, and bus + JR train. Just in case, I found all the timetables.
At the time we left home, it was good to take bus + bus. However, the bus didn’t take the expressway! It was a regular local bus. (Oops. But we didn’t wait for the bus for an hour.) We reached the destination about two hours after we left home.

After we arrived, we had lunch first!
When we visited there last time, for some reason we walked right to the edge of the park and had lunch at a restaurant. (What did we have?)
This time, we bought a package of rice balls and green tea at a supermarket near the bus stop, just in case. But a big park has no reason to lack places where you can get food. We bought two Sasebo style hamburgers at a food court.
We wanted to eat somewhere where we could see flowers and headed for the rose garden.
When we had one bite, we noticed that we hadn’t taken photographs of the food. (It’s always like this.)

Roses bloom more in spring? There were some in bloom. Some had buds, so a little later would be better?
The smaller English roses are really pretty.

We didn’t notice it before, or was it made in the last few years? We enjoyed the flower garden. There were colour themed gardens like I want to make someday! Blue, pink, yellow, and red. The season was wrong now, or the colours are more difficult to make, but the blue and pink gardens looked a little sad. The yellow and red gardens were doing well. They encouraged me to make a colour themed garden in the future. (Although we don’t have a big space.) Actually, I have longed for a blue or white garden for a long time.

By the way, the cosmos blossoms are in full bloom now.
We could see a hillside full of flowers. We really wanted to see it!
Below are the ‘unusual cosmos’ at the flower gallery.
(It’s in a field for kids we usually don’t go near. We went there for the cosmos.)
But we think a lot of regular cosmos flowers are most suitable for a big field.
They are bigger and have clear colours. Are the regular cosmos better at producing flowers?

Coming back home, we took the JR train + bus.
We were unexpectedly lucky with the transfers, and we could arrive home in about half the time it took on the way out.
We must remember to take the JR train and bus next time!
It was an entertaining time spent among the flowers at Umi-no-nakamichi Seaside Park. Are they better in spring?

– YS, 23 October 2007

23 October 2007