For Thanksgiving, I drove up to the Seattle area to spend the holiday and my days off with my friend Dan and his family. I had a nice break. Traffic was great, the weather was good considering it was late November, and I got to relax and play lots of games.
On Saturday, Dan and I had dinner at
Ooba Tooba Mexican Grill (so good!) and then went to Bellevue Botanical Garden for their
Garden d'Lights display. I thought I'd show you a few of those pictures. It was a great night, despite the crowds. I think Christmas lights are my favorite decoration.
They had different nature themes set up along the main path that you take to see the lights. When you first enter, they hand out a list of critters that you can look for (sort of a game that kids might like) and cross off. So this central area is obviously a pond with pondy animals.
Then there's a farmer back there.
A garden.
Then there's this flowing stream with jumping fish and you can see a peacock back there. I suppose that sentence needs lots of quote marks, since obviously it's all just blinking lights to give a certain effect. It's very cute, though!
On the right is the jungle area where they had a monkey hanging in the tree.
And this nice dragon was one of my favorite parts. His name is Snap d'Dragon, or something like that.
He's just making his way through the forest.
I loooooved the effect of the lights on the trees (left). It's a cool idea, and I want to try it sometime. When I have trees that I can light up. :) Until then, you guys can try it!
And here's a cute vineyard scene.
There was some other stuff, but I'm not going to show you every picture. I definitely recommend this place if you live in the Seattle area or will be visiting. I've been to the Bellevue Botanical Garden a couple of times before, but it was to see the garden in daylight (which I also recommend, and it's free). This light display did cost $5, but kids 10 and under are free, and they have several free nights. (I sound like I'm getting paid to tell you about it.)
How was your Thanksgiving?
Strangely, my Thanksgiving was very similar to yours!
ReplyDeleteThe pics are really great! You would kind of assume that pics just aren't going to be able to really capture the whole thing very well, but yours really did. I especially like the second picture of SnappyD and the vineyard : )
Thanks! Yeah, I wasn't sure about the best way to capture/edit the light photos, so I'm glad to hear that.
DeleteSorry I'm so late in checking out your blog. The time is getting away from me. These pictures put me in the Christmas mood, even though they are not Christmas lights. It IS the lights, of course, that change the mood. Love the pond scene!
ReplyDeleteThere are businesses (?) that will strategically place lights in your yard to best highlight trees (like the fuschia tree you photographed.) I guess there's a special method. It can be beautiful. Just photographing it is beautiful!
Thanks for the photos. It looks like you had a great stay in the Seattle area. (and no rain!)
Love, Mom
Oh it's fine, Mom. Sorry I'm late with this response. Well, I thought they were Christmas lights! :) They only have this display for the Christmas season.
DeleteYeah, you guys should light up your trees like that! I wonder what it takes.
That's cheaper than ours in ABQ. I like ours, but even though we're members of the BioPark, we have to pay $10 each for the River of Lights. That's kind of annoying. Also, they do the same light setup every year it seems like. So when you've gone once or twice, it makes it less fun to go (for the cost) in other years. We skipped it this year for this reason.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, not to be a cynic, I was just meaning that it's cool you got to go to that one and it's nice that it's inexpensive to do it.
Wow, I didn't realize the ABQ one was $10, but I know it's pretty fancy (based on your pictures). That's silly that you don't get a discount for being members, though! I'd like to see it sometime, but I can understand why you wouldn't want to keep going back. I love lights, but I realized photographing them isn't all that satisfying for me. And since photography is one of my big motivators to go places, I'd probably skip it after the first year.
ReplyDelete