October 2, 2017 (continued)

Emerging from the Maritime Museum, we took the first available Hop On Hop Off bus. The next place we went were the public gardens, a bona fide Victorian garden.

The requirements to be an “official” Victorian garden include being enclosed by a fence or wall and having a bandstand on the premises. It also has to be free to the public.

The gardens contained many still-blooming rose beds,

as well as a display of dahlias, identified by type.

Although many were starting to wilt, many other still looked beautiful and fresh. I took many close-up photos, happy for the chance to try out how well my new camera worked doing this (it did very well!).

There were designs of flowers arranged symmetrically around historic fountains. One of the fountains dated from 1869. One floral design consisted of flowers that resemble flames (celosia) of red and yellow in S shapes with silver round lights at one end of each, that resembled eyes, so they looked like snakes! (Whimsical snakes, not scary ones – I wonder if that was done on purpose?)

The Weekly Photo Challenge is about rounded this week, which these gardens demonstrated very well!

The gardens were delightful but I was glad it was lunchtime, giving us an excuse to go inside a café near the entrance where the HOHO buses stopped, since I was very cold! We both had coffee and chicken melt sandwiches. From the table we sat at, we could see the bus stop form the window, and when we were ready to go, a HOHO bus happened to pull up, so we ran out and waved so it would wait for us. It wasn’t full, so we got right on.