Japanese Festival at Missouri Botanical Gardens

This weekend is the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Mark and I went on Sunday morning, as well as half the populaton of STL! There were lots of Japanese exhibitions, costumes and activities throughout the gardens. We still think our favorite activity there is to feed the HUGE koi in the pond in the Japanese Gardens. They are incredible!

Here is a view of the pond looking back towards the Japanese gardens. It is such a beautiful place!

This is the Climatron, which houses plants from different environments.

There is an ongoing display of sculptures by Niki throughout the garden. Here's one of my favorites.

The reflecting pools contained these HUGE Victoria lily pads, along with globes from the glass artist Chihuly. The lily pads were six feet or more in diameter. This is the first time I've been there when they were growing in all their glory.

Later that evening I was craving a good hamburger, so we did a web search for the "best burger in STL" and ended up at Blueberry Hill, a landmark restaurant in St. Louis. The hamburger was perfect, and we hung around and played a few games of darts afterwards (of course I lost, but it was fun!). Chuck Berry started his career at Blueberry Hill and still plays there on occasion, but so far I haven't been able to get any tickets. Here's a picture of the restaurant taken from their website.